User:Djangology99/sandbox

History
Cathal Cully and Neil Brogan became friends in 2008 and, in January 2009, Camlough native Cully agreed to create a band to support US surf pop band Wavves at a show in Belfast venue Laverys Bunker the following month, despite never having been in a band himself. He asked Brogan, from Bangor, to join him for the show as drummer, meaning Brogan had to learn to play the drums for the performance. The duo recorded a number of cassette-only demo releases which they put out through Cass/Flick Records (later re-named CF Records), a label founded by Brogan in 2006. In June of that year, they recorded a demo of the song "Cold Hands, Warm Heart" and contacted the Brooklyn-based indie label Captured Tracks. The label's founder, Mike Sniper, was impressed with the track and said he would be willing to release a record for them if they had more songs. They returned to him in November with 11 tracks, resulting in the release of Girls Names EP in April 2010. In the weeks before the EP's release, Cully and Brogan recruited Claire Miskimmin as bassist with the band, and Cully has claimed he had to teach Miskimmin to play the instrument before she could join them on tour. The band released a split single with San Diego quintet Heavy Hawaii in April 2010 and the seven-track mini-album You Should Know By Now in May, on British indie label Tough Love, featuring songs recorded before those that appeared on Girls Names EP. Between June and October 2010, the trio recorded their debut album at Belfast's Start Together Studios. One of the album's tracks, "I Lose", was released on a split 7-inch single with Brilliant Colors in November 2010 - the Girls Names song written in response to the all-female San Francisco trio's flip-side track "You Win". The limited edition single was released on Slumberland Records in the US and Tough Love in Europe. The 11-track album, Dead To Me, was released on the same labels in April 2011, and received an average score of 75% on review aggregating website Metacritic, indicating "generally favorable reviews". However, by the time of the album's release, the band was claiming that they had a new album ready to record and had already changed their style of music. They released a download-only single, "Black Saturday", in October 2011.

In early 2012, local musician Philip Quinn, who also performs under the name Charles Hurts, was added to the line-up as guitarist and keyboardist, playing his first show with the band on March 29 in Belfast's Mandela Hall, by which stage the band was only playing one song from Dead To Me in their set. In July 2012, they released the song "A Troubled See" on a split 7-inch single with London band Weird Dreams and October saw the release of "The New Life", the first single and title track from the band's forthcoming second album, with both new songs showcasing a shift in direction from the looser noise-pop of their earlier releases towards a krautrock, motorik-influenced sound and longer song lengths. "Hypnotic Regression", the second single from The New Life, was released as a download-only single in December. The album is due to be released on 18 February 2013.