Initially forming whilst in school in Abergele (near Rhyl, N.Wales), Gintis formed at a party when singer songwriter Carl and (ex) keyboard player Dave naturally gravitated over to where the music was playing on the tv, and saw a video by the band Grandaddy.  The two agreed that not being in Gintis was a terrible idea and then decided to make some music.  Although, neither could play their respected instruments and only owned an encore guitar between them.  I guess these two never did get any better at playing their instruments or collecting gear. 

After some initial attempts at home recording, which consisted of drinking stolen vodka and playing 7 minute long bass solo’s, (this collection of what can loosely be called songs, included “angry dwarves and teenage girls”, “Desmond Dance” – which was a dance track that contained the lyrics: “this is for the moon, this is for all you people on this planet…we’re gonna turn this thing into one big orgy!!”, “Desmond grass metal”, and “Roland Avenue” – the tune which would later be reworked and appear as “Hate isn’t the opposite of love, indifference is” on the Cloud Sounds compilation).  It was decided that the pair would recruit (force) friends from school to join their band.  Carl had befriended Joe (Drums, Keys, Vocals) whom at dinner times from 6th form would walk with Carl to the park to smell (but not smoke) his “jazz” cigarettes.  Joe initially turned down the chance to play in Gintis.  Carl kept harassing him until he caved in.  Kyle (lead guitar) was stolen from local band Jives Room, and Rob was later brought in to replace original bassist Dan, off of the back of him penning a song called “second hand shopping” in school about copping off with girls after everyone else has.

The band were absolutely terrible for the most part in the early days, but this didn’t stop them hyping themselves on local website forums (link2wales) and amazingly some people took the band seriously.  Then all of a sudden the band found themselves writing songs that were listenable, and with a little help from Ralph and Guy from Junebug, who recorded the bands’ first real demo and Adam Walton (Radio Wales) who gave them their first radio play, ended up attracting interest from welsh label slacyr records.  They produced on E.P for slacyr entitled (Supersoakers and megadrives broke these li’l hearts) produced by Steve Swindon (Flotation toy warning).  Later the band would go back into the studio with Steve to record their first album “Happy drunken accidents” which Steve thought was so good he set up a label for its release.

Around this time the band were playing increasingly regularly with St. Helens band The loungs, and they had many a drunken night enjoying each others sets.  The band then set about recording a 2nd album: “Idiot guides and plans”, sadly an unfortunate amount of family circumstances, distance between band members (who all had to move from the area for various reasons), abject poverty, depression and even short periods of homelessness delayed completion of this album for 3 to 4 years.  However the band feels this record is a triumph over adversity and it has all been done “in house” getting friends to play brass instruments for free, Steve and Chris at TAPE did not charge for their time nor use of the studio.  It cost barely a penny to make this record, using borrowed instruments and relying heavily on the generosity of others (which is good, because the band have and continue to have nothing) but what it is rich in, is depth, love, warmth and sincerity.  We hope that you will feel like part of the family too.

Carl x

Idiot Guides & Plans wil be released 11th April 2011.