True Strays live at The Crofters Rights, Bristol

True Strays play a hometown EP launch party for their second release... Support from the incredible Samantha Lindo and her band.

With over 20 UK festivals under their belt in 2018, their first foray into the European festival scene at La Truite Magique, Belgium and live sessions with Sofar Sounds and BBC Introducing in the West, things are starting to come together for True Strays and its founding members James Cameron and Joseph James.

The True Strays are a vintage loving, blues fuelled, dirty rock and roll band. Their live shows are a joyous hoedown of huge bass driven riffs, a howling tornado of resonator guitar, cacophonous drums and soaring Hammond organ.

Influences span the history of modern music with great admiration for the delta blues of the 40s and 50s, British Invasion and Psychedelic Rock of the 60s and 70s, Southern Rock and Soul and modern age Punk, Rock and Blues artists. Blues music is at the heart of everything they do but their sound isn’t bound to those rules or that genre. Influences include greats like Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf, Jimi Hendrix and Fleetwood Mac, The Doors and Pink Floyd and more recent punk and rock and roll bands like Nirvana, QOTSA and Idles.

Their debut EP ‘Where The Wild Things Hide and Hunt,’ which was described as ‘Delightful’ by Blues Matters Magazine and the “Real deal” by Dancing About Architecture,” displays the bands love of songwriting and the vintage sounds that inspire them. With four singles under their belts and memorable festival appearances at the likes of Boomtown, Greenman and Shambala, their new batch of material is cooking up deliciously indeed.

SAMANTHA LINDO
Samantha Lindo is a British singer – songwriter of mixed Jamaican heritage based in Bristol, UK, bringing together a fusion of soul, folk and trip-hop to create a style that is not easily box-able.

Having grown up listening to her grandfather’s record collection she immersed herself in the jazz and folk scenes of her adopted hometown, Bristol, and was inspired to start writing her own music. What followed was 3 EPs – Wars (2010), The Rush, The Light (2011) and Last Light in The Sky (2013) – and a UK-wide touring schedule.

In 2011, she founded Girl, Girls, Girls, an all-female arts collective in London, partnering with UK charity the Orchid Project to put a global end to female genital cutting (FGC) with fellow singer-songwriter friend Eliza Shaddad.