About Inspiral Carpets
Inspiral Carpets is an English rock band, part of the late-1980s/early-1990s Madchester movement. Formed in Oldham in 1983, the band's most successful lineup featured frontman Tom Hingley, drummer Craig Gill, guitarist Graham Lambert, bassist Martyn Walsh and keyboardist Clint Boon.
Going by "The Furs", Lambert formed line-ups loosely with other various past band members from 1980 to 1983 until he and singer Stephen Holt met at The Moor End indie disco in Oldham in 1983. Holt sang on the first two independent singles. Holt departed the band before they signed with Mute Records, Inspiral Carpets are known for using organs and distorted guitars with influences from psychedelic rock. In 2011, Hingley departed the band, though members disagree about the circumstances. The band continued, reuniting with Holt. Inactive since Gill's death in 2016, on 17 October 2022 the band announced they would be reforming and going on a tour of the UK in March and April 2023.
Graham Lambert experimented with line ups from 1980 to 1983, going by "The Furs", until him and Stephen Holt, a friend from their school days, formed Inspiral Carpets in 1983, originally as a garage rock- and punk-inspired band. Manchester drummer Chris Goodwin and bassist Tony Welsh helped record a demo and play live in and around the Oldham area. Due to Goodwin's commitments the band recruited 14-year-old drummer Craig Gill in 1986. Tony Welsh also had other music commitments and departed in 1986. The band then had a succession of bass players before Dave Swift, on bass and organist Clint Boon . The band released two albums of demos in the 1980s, Waiting for Ours and Songs of Shallow Intensity, including songs that would later be re-recorded.
Inspiral Carpets came to prominence along with bands such as the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays in the Madchester scene of the late 1980s. The band first appeared on a flexi-disc with "Garage Full of Flowers" that was given free with Manchester's Debris magazine in 1987. Their first proper release, the Cow cassette, soon followed. The 1988 Planecrash EP on the Playtime label received much airplay from Radio 1 DJ John Peel, who asked the band to record a session for his show. The band reworked their single "Find Out Why" as the theme song for the show 8:15 from Manchester.
As the band's popularity grew, Playtime's distributor Red Rhino Records went bankrupt, leading Inspiral Carpets to form their own label, Cow Records, in March 1989. The label's first release was the Trainsurfing EP. With half of the first album, Life, written, Holt and Swift departed and formed the Rainkings, so the band recruited Too Much Texas singer Tom Hingley and Martyn "Bungle" Walsh of The Next Step to replace them. Martyn Walsh became the band's 13th bass player. After a handful of singles on their own label, with "Move" nearly reaching the UK top 40, the band signed a deal with Mute Records and soon experienced their first top-40 chart success in the UK with "This Is How It Feels." The single reached No. 14 on the singles chart, and the debut album Life reached No. 2 on the albums chart in 1990.
The following year's The Beast Inside was less well received by critics, but still achieved a top-5 album chart ranking. The "Caravan" and "Please be Cruel" singles only reached No. 30 and No. 50 respectively, and an attempt to crack the American market largely failed. However, the band gained a strong following in Portugal, Germany and Argentina, where the 1992 album Revenge of the Goldfish became their most successful. The album peaked at number 17 in the UK and spawned four UK hit singles. The next album, Devil Hopping , reached number 10 in the album chart, with "Saturn 5" and "I Want You" as top-20 hits. The next single, "Uniform", stalled at No. 51 and in 1995, after the release of a Singles collection, the band were dropped by Mute and split up soon after.
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