A band

A group

A collective

Different people with different ideas and a need to intelligently express them in exactly the same way and manner.

Submitting all your energy, belonging to and being involved in something you and others believe. It's not that you plan to do it. It's more of a natural progression from sitting down learning your instrument and practicing on your own, to getting together with friends for fun and playing more, until it expands and becomes a big part of your life. We're not talking about the manufactured, generic ideas of the made for money puppets that clog up the airwaves everyday with the 'if it sells, keep churning it out' attitude. It's more along the lines of a love for the music combined with an honesty and a will to work for what you love even if it means working dead end jobs to keep you afloat, travelling for hours on end in cramped cold vans and sleeping on a differant floor everynight after one meal a day. It's all worth it in exchange for meeting countless numbers of wonderful, colourful people, hearing new and exciting bands, seeing towns and cities that you wouldn't usually go and visit, hanging out and sharing memories with friends and making new ones, the buzz of playing to an audiance that lets off because of your songs and best of all, getting to do something you love and believe in.

This pretty much sums us up. We started as a complete band in the autumn of 1996. One practice on a wednesday evening per week led to our first songs being written. We played our first show as 'doug' on Wednesday 4th December 1996, it was a seven song set and an experience that we will continue to work on as long as we are a group. After that first show we continued with the once a week practice and a string of new songs started to form, in between which we would try to get involved in as many shows as were available.

It was in November 1997 that we decided to demo a bunch of tracks to hand out on tape to people at shows. We headed out of town to a place called Weston-Super-Mare and a recording studio called the White House.there we stayed for three days in all: 1 day for the music, 1 day for the vocals and 1 day for a bit of mixing. All in all we recorded ten songs. Get in!

We played as many shows as we could get over the next ten months (nice one Jamie) and the cassette of demos that we were taking around made it way to the states (nice one Phil). A band from New Jersey called Bigwig got hold of a copy of the tape. They were heading out on tour as well as running a record label of their own and they invited us to join them as main support as well as using their contacts to release our cassette onto cd in some stores on the east coast of America and Canada. In September 1998 we returned to the White House to record four more tracks to complete the cd which was to be titled 'persona' and released through GFY records of New Jersey.

In mid January 1999 we headed to America, no funding, no idea of what to expect. Just a bunch of excited friends ready to play some shows. This experiance will not be forgotten, we played some great shows and met some even greater people. We toured for two months, returned to the UK in March and went back for a second tour in June '99 for a further two months. On both tours we travelled the east coast of America and Canada.

After these tours, back in the UK things quietened down for a while, we fell into a slight hole, a slump if you will. We played shows as they came but not as many as we should've done. A few spanners got thrown in the works and we had to slack off a bit, but we were asked to record a session for Radio One Wales and later in November 2000, we went back to the same studio, Twin Peaks, in the Brecon Beacons, to record four more new songs for a cd titled phase:2 to be released through Boss Tuneage and our own and our closest friends band THE TAKE's 23:59 label. We also had released a split 7" with THE ATARIS and our 'persona' record on vinyl through speedowax records and looked towards 2001 to get touring.

The next year saw us playing as much as possible and managing eventually to complete full tours of the UK playing with pleasure alongside many great bands.however all the music that we had originally released had become unavailable so we decided to compile a cd featuring everything released to date and put it out through gravity records. This is now.

Progression is important to us and we continue to look forward to writing better songs, it's a selfish need. On top of that is touring. We hope that people will continue to bless us with their presence and enjoy the shows and energy as much as we have and still do. Our thanks as always goes out to all that have been with us from the start, those that have just begun to enjoy and furthermore, those that'll be there in the future.

E-mail Douglas

Write to Douglas @:
7, Holly Grove
Cardiff
CF4 5UJ
Wales
UK