The Story Behind The Towers.....
The Towers began life back in November 2001 when the idea of forming a band and running a gig in order to raise money for Western Wildcats Hockey Club was first brought up. We began as a three peice band with Tower (Gavin Sommerville) on guitar and vocals, Nialtron (Niall Sommerville) on bass and vocals and Ali da Stix (Ali Rankin) on the drums. In the summer of 2001, Gaylord (Andy Greig) was added to the lineup to take over bass duties, while Tron moved onto lead guitar and that is our present line-up.
The first gig, Towers 1 if you will, took place on Saturday 5th January 2002 at Auchenhowie, home of the Wildcats. The Towers were supported in their debut gig by Ali's band 'Lux' (now known as 'Another Way Down) and Tron's band 'Three Mile Island'. The first gig was a trully incredible experience, we had to build our own stage from wooden crates and giant balck monolith esque plywood. Back then we didnt even have a soundman, we just did the levels ourselves, it was a trully makeshift night, but almost a hundred bloodthirsty rockers turned up to what has now become an historic event in the Bearsden music scene. No footage or photos actually exist of the night which is now refered to simply as T1, and as the memories grow hazier by the day, its difficult to rmember if it really happened at all!!
'T2: The Towers Strike Back!!' hit the shelves on Saturday 20th April 2002 and very much represented the rise in popularity of Towers gigs. On the night The Towers were joined by Three Mile Island, Spyer and Frank The Loser. The new additions to the band lineup reaped many rewards. Spyer brought a huge amount of variety to the proceedings and back then they were the only band of the four of us that were regularily gigging and writing and as such brought alot of experince to the night. I believe that T2 was the debut gig for FTL,a young band full of raw energy, long hair and naked feet! Towers 2 also saw the introduction of the now monsterous Towers merchandise range (however back then it was more of a fluffy wee kitten than a monster!) with the original (now known as retro) towers font on many different colour of t-shirt's been sold for an outrageously generous 7 quid! The night ended up being insanely busy with over 180 people pitching up and rocking out and after being hugely impressed by the support acts, The Towers finally took to the stage. As a band we can be tremendously self critical and it was after a distinctly average performance that night that I think we all realised that the next gig was trully make or break in terms of becoming a good band. Of course, our performance wasnt helped when Ali kicked a hole the size of Nialltron in his bass drum 2 songs into our 15 song set!!
When T3 (The Fellowship of The Towers) finally came along on Saturday 31st August 2002 it symbolised a huge step in terms of both the organisation of the gig and ourselves as performing artists. For the first time the gig was held outwith the Hockey Club, the Kessington Hall was the venue. New band 'The Line Changes' were added to the T2 lineup to add yet more spice to the proceedings. The final head count at the door reached the 350 mark, a trully incredible acheivment by all the bands who despite slow ticket sales at the start managed to get the hall jam packed. As far as our set went, I think we would all agree that its the most fun we've had as a band on stage. The singing was still rubbish, we were still just playing covers and to be honest we might not have been that great but the crowd seemed to love it all the same, what with people crowd surfing, getting thrown out and just generally moshing, it felt for the first time that we were really entertaining people and it certainly gave us a big boost in confidence.
So now we have finally made it to T4 'Now thats what I call Towers.....4!!', if you have read this far without turning off your computer you've done a fine job! T4 took place at the Cathouse on Friday 14th March 2003 and The Towers were supported by Spyer, Talent Show Dropout (formed from the ashes of the now defunct TMI) and of course Frank The Loser. We managed to pack around 400 into the venue, and the difference looking back just 14 months between this and the first gig was simply unbelievable. It was a top quality venue, it had a proper stage, soundmen, lighting, a barrier, proffesional security, and there was a video specialist, a photographer, and The Towers and Frank the Loser were now into their second line of merchandise, FTL were even selling cd's! The night was a huge success with every band performing to their best, even our singing sounded better (to us anyway!!) and we have hopefully set a benchmark for which future gigs will be judged against.
So what now you ask? (either that or 'if you were an ice cream, what flavour would you be?' or even 'when will this end??!!') Well rumours are that T5 is set to take place in September possibly at King Tuts which is a fantastic prospect for everyone involved. And for The Towers? Well we've finally started writing out own material and we've been offered some gigs over the Summer, so hopefully this is just the beggining!! See you soon!
The Towers would like to thank anyone who has ever helped us to get to where we are, all the volunteers, all the specialists and most importantly all the rockers, we couldnt do it without you!! Thanks.
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