User:SteveIsSteve12/sandbox

The Whiskey Knights are an English rock band, formed in 2013 in Frimley. The band's sound is a mixture of hard rock, punk and pop rock, combining the likes of The Wildhearts and Sum 41. They have released two studio albums, one live album, one EP and one demo with the album, Amethyst, being their most recent release in 2020.

Throughout the band's history, their founding members Steve Smith and Scott Thatcher have been ever-present and are also the primary songwriters. Bassist Lew Smith (brother of Steve) and drummer Ali Soueidan joined in August and October 2021 respectively.

Formation and early material
The Whiskey Knights formed in March 2013 after Steve Smith initially had the idea of forming an acoustic comedy duo with his friend Scott Thatcher. The two decided to scrap in the idea in favour of a more serious rock band approach and began writing with their first song "Whiskey Nights" being released on 24 April 2013. Two weeks later they released two new songs, "Change" (an updated version of an old song Steve wrote in 2008) and "Asteroid". On 4 June 2013, the duo released The Whiskey Demos, a collection of the three previously released songs and two new songs "There's Fire In Her Eyes" and "The Music". By the end of June, they had decided to start working their first full-length album.

Whiskey Nights (2013-2015)
Writing for the band's first album continued throughout 2013 when, on 12 December, they announced they had fifteen songs complete with recording commencing on 21 December. Recording continued in to early 2014 and the album's title, Whiskey Nights, was announced in a video update on their YouTube channel on 22 February, they also revealed that the album was about 80% complete with only vocals left to record.

In early April, Steve decided he wasn't happy with how the album sounded and wanted to re-record it. The new recording sessions began mid-April until November 2014 after a number of lyrical changes and problems with Steve's recording equipment delayed finishing the album. Recording was able to continue again in January 2015 but completion was delayed further because Steve wanted to start the album from scratch once again and Scott wanted to rewrite lyrics to some of the songs he wrote. The duo were ready to record again in March, it was also at this time they decided to reduce the number of tracks to appear on the album from fifteen to ten after being dissatisfied with some of the material. All of the music was recorded in a month but the vocals took longer than expected due to lyrical changes once more.

Recording for the album was finally completed in early October and the debut album Whiskey Nights was released 18 October 2015.

And So It Begins (Again) (2016-2019)
After the release of Whiskey Nights, the band went quiet but behind the scenes they were writing new material and discussing a second album. It wasn't until 1 July 2016 that they announced their return and were recording songs for a new album. During July they did live broadcasts of two separate recording sessions featuring new songs "And So It Begins (Again)" and "Dream". They went quiet again but continued to write extensively, eventually revealing a photo on 22 September of an album song recording progress chart with sixteen songs listed along with a title of "Untitled Second Album", further teasing a new album. Writing and recording continued throughout the rest of 2016 and in to 2017 with an update in October 2017 revealing they were still working on new material.

An update in June 2018 revealed that recording for a second album was still ongoing and there was no indicator of a release date. In March 2019, the duo announced they had scrapped plans for a second album and instead were going to release a five track EP called And So It Begins (Again). The EP was released 8 April 2019.

Amethyst (2019-2020)
In November 2019, seven months after the release of And So It Begins (Again), the band put out a series of Facebook posts over a period of several days, revealing a letter day until the word "Amethyst" was spelt, officially announcing their second album Amethyst, with an initial release of late December. Over the next twelve days they revealed the song names as well as showing off a new logo. Release of the album was delayed after Scott was unhappy with one of the songs and wanted to write a new song to replace it and Steve also wanted to re-record some elements of the album.

On 23 March 2020 the UK entered lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic delaying the album further. In order to keep their fans entertained during this time, Steve started releasing a series of videos, performing live acoustic versions of their songs, including some that would appear on Amethyst called Whiskey Wednesdays.

Recording for the album finished 11 October with the final track listing being revealed three days later. Amethyst was released on 6 November 2020.

2021-present
The band were fairly quiet up until 24 August 2021 when they announced that Steve's brother, Lew Smith, had joined the band as their bassist. They completed their line up with drummer Ali Soueidan joining 4 October, along with some videos of them rehearsing together, some promotional photographs and a new website. Speaking of the complete line up, Steve and Scott had always wanted to form a full band ever since the beginning but never moved forward with the idea until this point.

The band announced their first ever live show at The Acoustic Couch in Bracknell on 18 December 2020 but it was cancelled on the day of the show due to members of another band testing positive for COVID-19. The venue rebooked the band to perform the following month, meaning they performed their first ever show on 22 January 2022, just under nine years after forming.

On 25 February 2022 the band released a live in the studio album, Four Knights In Farnborough. The movie of the same release came out 26 June.

The band continued to perform live throughout 2022 and in December announced they were writing new material.

In February 2023 the band returned to the stage to support One Last Day. Attentions then focused on writing and in September it was revealed that they had fourteen new songs and recording had begun.

Current

 * Steve Smith - vocals, guitar (2013-present)
 * Scott Thatcher - vocals, guitar (2013-present)
 * Lew Smith - bass (2021-present)
 * Ali Soueidan - drums (2021-present)

Discography

 * The Whiskey Demos (2013)
 * Whiskey Nights (2015)
 * And So It Begins (Again) (2019)
 * Amethyst (2020)
 * Four Knights In Farnborough (2022)