Local York band Faux Pas has recently won the Centre Stage competition to play this years Leeds Festival and got the opportunity to meet Blossoms in Leeds.

After the success of last years performers, Leeds based Centre Stage and Futuresound competitions continue to give local bands the once-in-a-lifetime chance to compete in a musical talent competition where the prize is a coveted spot on the Reading and Leeds line up. This year we are proud to announce Indie Rock band Faux Pas from York has won this amazing opportunity. Since its initial launch by The Pigeon Detectives in 2009, Centre Stage has raised an incredible £200,000 for Martin House Children’s Hospice and provided a platform for over 190 young musicians to showcase their emerging talent.

Alongside this, Faux Pas with other competition winner Fighting Caravans traveled to Leeds to meet fellow northerners Blossoms, during the promotional tour for their debut, self titled album, which is heading straight for the top of the UK Album Chart this week. Leeds Festival founder Melvin Benn talked about Blossoms as the perfect example of what can happen to a band with the right breaks in the space of one short year. Blossoms were unsigned when they played the Festival Republic Stage at their first Leeds and Reading Festivals in 2015. This year, they play on the NME / Radio 1 Stage, with a critically acclaimed album hitting the very top of the Charts.

 

.Blossoms are an alliance of best friends, all born in the same hospital – Stockport’s Stepping Hill, who pooled their resources in 2013 after playing independently in separate local groups.  Taking their name from a pub on the 192 bus route to Manchester, Blossoms set up camp in the warehouse of Salt’s granddad’s scaffolding business, their rehearsal home to this day.

“Fundamentally we want to be a great pop band,” says front man Tom Ogden. “We’re influenced by the present as much as the past and we want to sound as modern as we can. We want to sound like a band who could only ever exist now, not then.”    Blossoms’ sound is a perfect balance between Josh Dewhurt’s crystalline guitar, Myles Kellock’s futuristic synths, Charlie Salt (bass) and Joe Donovan’s (drums) robust rhythm section and Ogden’s star-bound vocals, a rich Northern croon vibrating in its own slipstream between Richard Ashcroft and Alex Turner.

Blossoms have just completed their biggest ever UK tour which included sold out shows at London’s Scala and Manchester’s Albert Hall. The band will be performing at various festivals throughout the UK this summer including appearances at Glastonbury, T in the Park, Reading and Leeds, Parklife, Kendal Calling, Festival No.6 and more. Furthermore, Faux Pas will be performing on the BBC Introducing Stage at Reading and Leeds festival later this month.