Starsail began shape in 1995 under the name of 'Hipster'. Formed over the summer of Britpop the band were heavily influenced by The Verve, The Stone Roses as well as what was happening at the time with Blur and Oasis. Hipster performed a handful of gigs over the next 10 months but never managed to play out of their hometown of Falkirk.
Hipster split up mid 1996, only to reform at the end of that year with new bass player Rob McKinlay. Now renamed 'starsail' and relocated mostly in Glasgow, this line up has remained unchanged to the present day where we have been gigging around Glasgow for what seems like forever.But our main strength as a band is that we have refused to give up. It is unique for a local band to go through nearly four years without any sort of line up change. Our influences are so wide they are virtually unlistable. At present our playlist includes; The Chemical Brothers, The Byrds, Tim Buckley, Death in Vegas, Northern Soul, Love, Curtis Mayfield, Joy Division, The Stooges, Spacemen 3, Jesus and Mary Chain, Terry Callier, Primal Scream, Nuggets Compilation, Badly Drawn Boy, The Charlatans, The make up, Flaming Lips, The Standells, Velvet Underground, Pusherman, Donovan, as well as the utterly eclectic compilation tapes that Stuart makes up for us.
Our other main strength, we believe, is that fact that we are consistently writing quality tunes. We have a very high standard to maintain, and over the past four years we've got over the early phase of knocking out any old rubbish, to having a high standard of songs to live up to.
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