The band's members have included Garce Allard (vocals), Tristan Garel-Funk (guitar), Tony McGuinness (now part of the trance trio Above & Beyond) (guitar), Cliff Silver (bass), Ian Gibson (bass), David Wood (keyboards and saxophone), Juliet Sainsbury (keyboards), Marco Mullner (keyboards) and Nigel Pollard (drums & percussion).
The original lineup produced two studio albums, Epic Garden Music and Feeding the Flame, before splitting in 1983. During this initial period they recorded a John Peel Session for the BBC and a live concert for the Dutch Radio Hilversum station, which was subsequently released as the album Total Sound. Live performances included headline dates at UK colleges and clubs with occasional trips to Europe, although they did support The Sound at a major London venue on the day Epic Garden Music entered the UK independent charts.
European interest in the band began to grow, and with the release of second album Feeding the Flame, they toured Germany and Holland, gaining a dedicated fanbase. Artistically, Feeding the Flame is considered to be their finest work and hints at a potential that could have elevated them to the status of contemporaries such as The Chameleons, Cocteau Twins and Modern English. Tensions within the band caused a complete disintegration, however, with Garel-Funk and Pollard leaving to form The Snake Corps.
Not much was heard for a while; their label Midnight Music released a "mopping up" album entitled In the Breeze, which included one of their previously unreleased signature tunes, "Three Lines".
They returned in 1986 with an updated lineup (Tony McGuiness on guitar, Juliet Sainsbury on keyboards and Ian Gibson on bass), and new album entitled The Mirror Test. Although stylistically similar to the original lineup, the dark edginess of songs like "In Flux" had, to a certain extent, been replaced by more melodic songwriting. On the other hand, the new lineup had a live energy previously lacking, and as they continued to play the best of the old songs, their act developed to produce some truly memorable performances.
As interest abroad grew, the band performed extensively in Holland, Spain and France, headlined at the old Marquee club in London's Soho, and with the release of their fourth album, Headland, were a featured band in Melody Maker.
They released a further album Treehouse Poetry before Midnight Music went bust and the band split once again, coming together occasionally for gigs supporting And Also The Trees at the Marquee Club and London's Electric Ballroom. E-mail from Eternity, a 'best of' compilation, was released by the record label Cherry Red in 1996 after the company picked up the Midnight catalogue.
In 2002, the band released a brand new album called Melting in the Fullness of Time. They played two dates in Italy a year later.
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