Student Spotlight – Cloaks

We spoke to up and coming Glasgow 5 piece ‘Cloaks’ about their journey so far, upcoming plans and their time studying at RMC…

Catch them at King Tut’s on Saturday 10th December, supporting Balado.

Tell us about your band, and how would you describe your music?

We’re Cloaks, we’re a 5-piece rock band based in Glasgow. We met at Riverside in 2018 on the Production course and quickly bonded over our shared love for music. As we became closer as friends, Finlay became more comfortable sharing the music he wrote with us. This sparked the first session in which Thomas and Finlay wrote the original idea for our debut song ‘Beautiful Mind’. After the Beautiful Mind session, Jamie and Finlay also got together to write which materialised in the beginning of our song ‘Alone’ which eventually featured on our debut EP. These sessions sparked the idea of actually starting a band. In need of a bass player, we asked Jamie’s friend Ben, whom he had previously discussed starting a band with, to join.

The last piece of the puzzle was a drummer. Lewis, the last member of the original 4, stepped up to the plate to play drums in a rehearsal to see how Beautiful Mind sounded. He has since become our permanent drummer.
We make guitar based rock music and try to experiment within that sound with different tunings and time signatures.

What music/ projects have you recently been working on?

After releasing 3 singles, we released our debut EP ‘The 8th Floor’. It consists of 5 tracks with sound ranging from the explosive opener ‘Did You Know?’ to the mellow, acoustically driven closer ‘Living With Shadows’. 4 of the tracks were recorded at Riverside in Studio 2, engineered/produced by Shaun Neethling, our former lecturer.

It was an incredibly enjoyable experience to be able to work with one of our mentors and gain so much knowledge and experience from him. The lead single ‘Domino’ was recorded at Castle of Doom studio by another former RMC student Jamie Holmes. This was also a great experience, recording in an unfamiliar environment and venturing out of our comfort zone.

How have the Riverside Music College courses helped you – what skills/knowledge/classes were the most useful for you?

The multi-track mixing and recording class with Ross Cameron provided us with invaluable knowledge and experience on how to work within a studio environment as a recording engineer. This meant that when we were on the other side of the process as an artist, we were comfortable to share our own opinions on how best to create the sound we were looking for. The audio for multimedia class with Grant McLennan gave us the ability to effectively operate a DAW, and how to mix to a high standard. Again, this meant we were able to provide succinct, accurate feedback when the EP was in the mixing stage.

What are your future plans/projects?

We are continuing to write and record new material while evolving our sound. Recently, we recorded a new track in Studio 2 which we hope to release at some point in the near future. We have been gigging in Glasgow for a year and a half playing in venues such as The Garage and King Tuts. You can see us live at our next gig this Saturday, the 10th of December, supporting Balado back in King Tuts. In the future we plan to continue to grow our fanbase in the Glasgow area and beyond.