User:Purple-Trues/sandbox10

= Purple Trues = Purple Trues were a Scottish indie-synth group of the mid-late 1980s who had a strong local reputation and some national attention but ultimately failed to turn this into mainstream success.

Formed in late 1985 as “The Purple Trews” by keyboard player, vocalist and lead songwriter Pete McDonald, together with fellow Heriot-Watt University student Brian Davies (guitar). The band was completed with the addition of Andy Findlay (drums), Kath Gibbs (rhythm guitar/vocals) together with Edinburgh University friends Rab Andrews on a second synthesiser and David McLeod on bass.

Through 1986, the band built a solid student following in colleges and Universities through Scotland and had begun to attract some wider attention, lining up support slots to the Silencers and favourable reviews in the local and national music press. In early 1987 Andrews and McLeod announced their sudden departure and the band’s sound technician Roy Lynch was hastily drafted in as cover for Andrews while sometime roadie Gareth Thomson temporarily filled in for McLeod on bass.

By the end of the 1987 Deek Rogers had come in as a permanent replacement for Rab Andrews while McLeod, returned on bass. This would also mark a reframing of the band as “Purple Trues”, the alternate spelling introduced by McDonald and Davies to give the band a more cosmopolitan feel. The band would also release a four track EP in early 1988 on Glasgow label Tin Drum, with the title track, “Copper Heart “, gaining Radio 1 evening airplay and granting the band an invite to support Primal Scream on their pre-tour warm up gigs that year.

By mid-1989 the band had run out of steam and with little sign of making sustained progress, most members returned focus to their degrees and left the industry. Davies, McDonald and Gibbs would return in 2005 as “Blunt Pin” and have continued to play intermittently under this name since then.