Music Features

We all know the best bands grow from a common thread; be it friendship, a love of the same music, guitars or even beer. Then again there's an exception to every rule.

Belgrade Star formed when singer Richard Whittaker decided he wanted to form a band.

"I used to go to Fibbers quite a bit and that's where I met Matt (drums). We got chatting and it seemed to work out. Matt knew Pete (Bass) so we started off as a three piece."

"Our influences are very diverse. I grew up with Britpop so my main influence is probably Noel Gallagher. But there's also a lot of 60s bands; The Small Faces, specifically Steve Marriot. He's a great performer."

The influences may be diverse, but they have good song writing in common. Something that shows in Belgrade Star's material

"We really like to push the melody. I know there's a lot of bands that throw in loads of guitar parts and make it really quite technical. Whereas we try to strip it down. Less is definitely more. The 60s tunes revolved around the melody, and that's important to us."

The band currently have a two track demo available, recorded in Manchester.

"We used a quite well known studio. The Doves recorded there. Elbow were upstairs while we were there. And we got a really good producer engineer working with us so it sounds great. That's available to download on our MySpace page.

"We're about to go back to record our second EP and we'll probably sell that. We didn't want to sell the first one, it seemed better to give it away so more people would hear it."