Meet Hebden Bridge Synth-Pop Quartet, Start To Run

Start To Run first formed and flourished when Bob (synth, guitar vocals) and Adam (guitar, vocals) met just before lockdown.

Adam, who spent a chunk of the Nineties in rock band Brat – a period he describes as “a nuts few years” – had been on the lookout for a keyboard player for some time. They met, they jammed and they got on famously.

Bob: “We’ve been in many bands over the years and had experiences where the dynamic has just been awful. But there are no egos in Start To Run. You can bring whatever you want to the table and it will be welcome. That’s a healthy environment to being creative.”

Adam: “Bands that have egos never jam well. Because everyone’s a bit worried about getting something wrong.”

Bob: “Our backgrounds are quite diverse. Adam is very technically sound, but self-taught, whereas I’ve got a musical theory background. But it works.”

Through a few subsequent line-up tweaks – and the inevitable name changes – the band has expanded and evolved. They are now a settled four-piece with latest recruits Will on bass and Jo providing additional vocals.

Experience has shown Adam and Bob that personality clashes can quickly derail a music project. Equally, they’ve found that starting a band now, “in mid-life”, with the trials of parenting and the like, has actually given them a greater scope of creativity.

Adam: “There’s a lot more to write about. I had a 10 year gap from doing anything music-wise around my thirties to doing it now. We’re a band of tired dads, tired parents, so it’s more of a release. And it’s forced us to find other ways to rehearse. We’ve put together a digital online rehearsal space using JamKazam and we have all got studio space at home. You just need a sound card. A good internet connection.”

Adam is very open about one particular area of his life that he tends to write about a lot.

Adam: “I’ve grown up with a condition called GAD. General Anxiety Disorder. It is both a curse, in terms of it’s hard to manage, but in terms of giving you material, it’s really valuable. You can say things in a song that you can’t say face-to-face with another person. What’s weird is, playing and playing live, it doesn’t ever set off the anxiety.”

There is an interesting, nuanced tension of sorts between Start To Run’s largely upbeat, warmly melodic base and the introspective, somewhat darker tones of the lyrical narratives they lay on top. Their debut track, Our Love, is one of their more overtly pop-fuelled creations – it’s a blanketed bundle of gently shimmering mid-Nineties indie, a la St Etienne, One Dove, Dubstar or The Auteurs.

Bob: “We’ve been described as ‘sad indie disco’. I quite liked that. But I think we’re quite a joyful band.”

Adam: “Our Love is an interesting song. It’s a love song about a difficult relationship and someone coming to terms with ‘OK, that person may have been cold, but actually they did love me.’”

Musically, the band pull on a range of influences. Adam is unapologetically obsessed with War On Drugs and, in particular, their Lost In The Dream album. “I can’t move on from it,” he says. Bob veers towards mid-noughties indie-rock bands like Sea Power and, more recently, DIIV. Bassist Will drifts more to the ambient dynamism of post-rock and epic soundscape bands like Explosions In The Sky.

Adam: “I still always hear a bit of The Horrors in us as well. It’s the integration of synths. And what good band doesn’t have a bit of Joy Division in there?”

Having settled on their line-up and built up a half hour set, Start To Run played several gigs in the Valley during the latter stages of 2024, most notably supporting the Miki Berenyi Trio at TOWN Festival in Halifax.

Adam: “That Grayston gig actually took four years. We were supposed to be playing there before lockdown in March 2020 with the old band and then that got cancelled. Then I got covid and again we couldn’t do it. So when they finally gave us a date, it ended up being a massive gig. It was great. I was a bit star-struck with Miki. She’s a Nineties icon.”

Bu the band’s most memorable live experience to date was, perhaps, their very first.

Adam: “We thought we’d do a friends and family gig. It was while social distancing was still in place. We rented the Town Hall in Hebden Bridge. It’s a great venue. It was warm and we opened up all the doors. I remember looking out halfway through. There was a group of people on the bridge and people across the river in a coffee shop like ‘what’s going on?’ No one had heard any live music in ages. That was really memorable.”