This highly fêted UK alternative rock band was formed in 1995 by sound engineer Grant Nicholas (b. Newport, Wales; guitar/vocals) and Jon Lee (b. 1968, Newport, Wales, d. 7 January 2002, Miami, Florida, USA; drums), who had previously played together in Reel and Rain Dancer. They were joined by Taka Hirose (b. Nagoya, Japan; bass), and began playing under the name of Real. After signing to the Echo label later the same year, the trio changed their name to Feeder and played their first gig in Yeovil, Somerset on 25 May. The band released their debut Two Colours EP in November 1995, and built up a substantial live reputation as a support act for Terrorvision and Reef. An acclaimed six-track mini-album, Swim, followed in June 1996, but their early singles "Stereo World", "Tangerine", "Cement", and "Crash" made little progress in the charts, with only the last two reaching the UK Top 50.
A new song, the dramatically charged "High", gained heavy airplay on mainstream radio, and entered the UK charts at number 24 in October 1997, with the band finally looking like achieving the success their highly melodic guitar rock deserved. "High" was included on a reformatted version of their debut long-player Polythene, originally released in May 1997. An excellent collection of post-grunge alternative rock, the album saw the band receiving further high praise from the music press. They returned in March 1999 with a new single, "Day In Day Out", followed by the supercharged "Insomnia" and Yesterday Went Too Soon. The band's third full-length set Echo Park was a disappointment to those fans anticipating great things on the strength of the sparkling "Buck Rogers". The UK Top 5 single proved to be the strongest track on an album that merely satisfied rather than excited. The commercial success of Echo Park consolidated the band's reputation as one of the UK's leading rock acts, but tragedy followed in January 2002 when Lee was found hanged at his home in Miami. Nicholas and Hirose carried on, teaming up with Echo Park producer Gil Norton and recruiting Mark Richardson to fill in on drums for the recording of Comfort In Sound.
