Band hope career is heading in the right direction

Aug 30 2007 By Graham Fraser

SOOTH are one local band who are hoping all their recent hard work is about to pay off.

The boys have spent six months perfecting their debut EP release and are now ready to play a number of gigs.

Sooth - David Jack (vocals/guitar), Brian Eley (bass guitar and backing vocals), Malcolm Frew (guitar) and David Frew (drums) - have been around the South Lanarkshire music scene since 2002.

They were formed following the demise of two other local outfits, Dominate and Chianti.

David Jack, known as Deejay, and the Frew brothers are all from Carluke, while Brian is from Newmains. David and the Frews were educated at Carluke High School. Brian spent his school years at St Aidan’s High in Wishaw.

The band are now looking forward to performing items from their EP live to their growing number of fans.

Lead singer David (23), told the Advertiser: "We spent a long, long time in the studio perfecting our debut EP, Six Months On. We spent so long on it because we want to show everybody what we can all do, so we wanted it to be as good as it could be."

"We are an unsigned band and all have full-time jobs or are full-time students. We work very hard to get everything done ourselves, from producing our own website to designing the artwork on the EP.

"We think if we continue to work hard then it will all be worth it.

"The band know that if we are doing it ourselves then we are in control of how good it will be. Saying that, like every band, we are looking to be attached to a label at some point."

Franz Ferdinand’s front-man Alexander Kapranos famously stated he wanted to make music that girls could dance too. While this ethos has spurred on a generation of young indie rockers, Sooth take a slightly different take.

"We just want to make music for us, for 23-year-olds," explains David. "There are lots of bands who are trying to make music for 15- and 16-year-olds because that is a good target market commercially.

"We just make music that sounds cool to us. We don’t try to pigeonhole it to suit certain tastes."

In October 2005, Sooth released their online EP Escapados. However, the release of Six Months On marks the band’s first real showcase of their talents.

The record was produced in the Chemikal Underground’s recording facility in Blantyre in October of last year.

Six Months On’s tracks - entitled "All Our Stories", "Eenie Meanie", "The Night" and "Am I Guilty?" - will form the core of the band’s material as they start gigging again. The band were frustrated over the summer months as an operation to David’s nose prevented him from singing.

"I have had problems with my sinus for years and it got to the stage where something had to be done about it," explained David, who is a computing teacher at Clyde Valley High School in Wishaw.

"I got a bit of slagging because at the end of the day I got a nose job."

The boys were on Jim Gellatly’s flagship Exposure show on XFM in June and are about to embark on a number of gigs around central Scotland while writing new material.

They play Livi Nitespot (Powerstation) in Livingston September 8 then Barfly in Glasgow on September 30, Nice’ n’ Sleazy in Glasgow on October 16 and Blackfriars on October 18. For more information, go to www.myspace.com/sooth.