Bellshill band The Lonely Souls play King Tut’s

Feb 4 2010 by Chris Clements, Hamilton Advertiser

BELLSHILL group The Lonely Souls will perform at King Tut’s in Glasgow this weekend.

The four-piece outfit will be playing at the famous venue tomorrow (Friday) along with Dunfermline-based band The Draymin.

The Lonely Souls are currently playing throughout Scotland as they promote their new self-released EP, Deep Digger, which will be available next month.

The band also opened the No Mean City festival in Glasgow recently, while also performing at the ABC and O2 Academy in recent months.

And, while they write and record new material for their second album, they hope that their gig at King Tut’s will bring them some much-needed exposure.

Lead guitarist Mark Clinton (33) said that the band were formed in 2008 and released their debut album - Move Your Bones - in March of last year.

The former Brannock High pupil said: “I’d been in bands for years before that and had released albums myself.

“I was looking to get back into it and my brother Paul was putting a band together and he asked me to help out. It went from therey.”

The band are Mark, vocalist and guitarist Paul Clinton, Alan Hislop on rhythm guitar, Mark Thomson on bass guitar and harps, and drummer Craig Wales.

Among their influences are Steve Earle, Gomez, Alabama 3, Ryan Adams and Led Zeppelin.

Mark continued: “The new EP sees a lot of change in our music. Before, I sang a lot of the tracks, but now my brother has taken over. He has a much better voice! This new recording is different and has a lot harder feel. It’s more like Alabama 3, who are one of our main influences.

“I think you always have to tell people who you’re influenced by. There is nothing worse than when someone asks a band who they sound like, and they say ‘nothing, we sound like us.’ Everyone sounds like someone.”

The band are excited about tomorrow’s gig at King Tut’s, the venue where Oasis were discovered, but this isn’t Mark’s first gig there.

He said: “I played there about nine years ago with my old band Casino.

“That night we performed with Biffy Clyro and Aerogramme and both of those bands were signed that night. We weren’t!

“It was one of the biggest walk-in attendances at Tut’s ever at the time.

“We played T in the Park and the Barrowlands and we were using the internet, even back then.

“We had something like 100,000 downloads but we never made any money from it. So, from a personal point of view, tomorrow’s gig is something to look forward to. “It’s a great sound there and people come to see you. It’s exciting.”

Tickets for the gig cost £5 and available from the band and from www.ticketmaster.co.uk. For more information on the band, visit www.thelonelysouls.co.uk.