SCHEDULED for November, Cloth’s debut album is one of the most eagerly-anticipated Scottish records of the year.
The alt-rock trio’s fanbase already spans the UK, with their delicately crafted singles picking up support from influential BBC radio DJs Steve Lamacq and Huw Stephens, the latter naming them as one of his Tips for 2019 after giving their hypnotic track Holder substantial airplay.
The Glasgow band’s reach looks set to widen further, with performances coming up at Brighton’s Great Escape, the UK’s biggest gathering of music bods from around the world.
“We’re totally looking forward to it, it’ll be our first time,” says guitarist Paul Swinton. “There’s some great Scottish music that’s going to be showcased and in the wider sense, there’s bands like Self Esteem we’re massive fans of and we really appreciate we’re going to share a bill with them.”
Tom Robinson, of 6 Music, was right to describe the captivating dream pop of latest single Old Bear as “a new high point from an already exceptional band”: Cloth seem to have arrived fully formed.
The truth is more complex, of course, with the band’s origins dating back to Swinton’s childhood with guitar-playing twin sister Rachael, who provides Cloth’s melancholic, gossamer-light vocals.
“Rachael picked up the guitar when she was nine,” says Swinton. “It was a year after that I wanted to get in on the act as I saw it was pretty cool. So I joined in. In the early days, she was always wanting to write songs, whereas I wanted to be able to play more and get my technical chops up.”
The pair went on to meet bassist Fraser Smith and drummer Clare Gallacher at the Academy of Music and Sound, then part of Stow College, and formed pop band Cafe Disco before the twins put down their guitars to study at Glasgow University.
After graduating, the Swintons reconvened with Gallacher and spent a couple of years writing before heading to Chem 19 to work with engineer Derek O’Neill, also King Creosote’s principal synth man.
The three had a distinct sense of how they wanted the new outfit to sound.
“We tend to gravitate to music where there is a lot of space to breathe within it,” Swinton says. “When something features, it usually features for a specific purpose. We saw that there was a lot of music out there which was guitar-heavy and we wanted to
use the guitar in a different way where you weren’t bashing out full chords, it more restrained, melodic lines backed up by deeper synths.”
He adds: “Synths are often used in a quite negative, quite stereotypical way. The synthy stuff that I like is from the 1980s where you have other instruments; it’s not this wall of sound. We initially put a lot of ideas in and then we gradually take things out to see how little the song can exist with it technically still being a song.”
The rush to champion Cloth and the growing buzz ahead of their debut album has all been rather unexpected for the band, says Swinton.
“Everything has happened in a bit of a whirlwind,” he says. “The surprise has been amplified by all the time we had taken to write the tunes and get them exactly the way we wanted. We had cocooned ourselves a bit so when we opened up, it felt doubly exciting.”
Since emerging around this time last year with the sultry Demo Love, Cloth have found themselves especially taken to the hearts of fans of minimalists The xx, trippy LA band Warpaint and Grangemouth’s finest, the Cocteau Twins.
“Heaven Or Las Vegas is one of our favourite records of all time,” says Swinton of the Cocteaus’ poppy 1990 album. “We can’t really get away from listening to their records when we want to get a bit inspired.”
A recent period of house-sitting for Ian Smith of record label Last Night From Glasgow gave them introductions to the likes of David Sylvian’s Brilliant Trees and Talk Talk’s Spirit Of Eden, landmark records which are both experimental and meticulous.
Smith and co’s crowd-funded label rightfully snapped up Cloth shortly after their first video was uploaded to YouTube.
“We are continually delighted to be working with them,” says Swinton of Last Night From Glasgow, also home to TeenCanteen and resurgent indie-pop legends Bis.
“Ian is a massively supportive person. Because everything is coming from his love of music and it’s a not-for-profit, it’s done with the utmost care.”
Cloth play two gigs in May with Broken Chanter, the very promising new project from David MacGregor of Kid Canaveral, who has an album scheduled for September.
Titled Both Sides Of The Clyde, the gigs will see Cloth headlining on May 24 before opening for Broken Chanter the following evening. A Broken Chanter lathe-cut vinyl single is available for pre-order and to collect at the gigs.
May 24, The Glad Cafe, Glasgow, 8pm, £9; May 25, The Hug and Pint, Glasgow, 8pm, £9. Tickets: bit.ly/BothSides05. www.facebook.com/clothband www.lastnightfrom
glasgow.com
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