Morning Runner split up

Reading’s Morning Runner, who released their debut album ‘Wilderness Is Paradise Now’ last year, have split up.

The band announced the split via their MySpace page, claiming that pressures from their record label, Parlophone, to make a commercially viable second album led to the split.

“The first record was a relative commercial failure and heaped pressure on us to have a follow up hit record,” they wrote. “We tried to ignore this and write the songs that we wanted. However, having been encouraged by the label to go away and experiment, they made a U-turn and decided that the music wasn't commercially viable.

“We had a couple of days apart to think through what we wanted to do next. When we came to sit down and talk about stuff, Tom [Derrett, bass] and Fields [drums] came to the decision that they'd had enough.

“This wasn't what Matt [Greener, vocals] and Ali [Clewer, drums] wanted particularly, but obviously they respect their decision and came to the agreement that with the loss of Tom and Fields they should call it a day.”