Hamish originally formed, as a three piece with Peter, James and Steven, who practised and played with no base player in Dec 1997.
At their first gig at Clowne Community Centre, John, Peters twin attended, and decided to leave the band he was playing lead guitar for, and join the band as the Hamish base player.
There was no band name at this time, only an Eye dear to call the band Retina, but they took a lot of stick for this name, and the first time they played a gig as a foursome they were called Flex Head.
They then played a number of gigs where they decided on their own style and the Hamish name was adopted.
This was firstly a very mixed bag with Nirvana covers being played alongside songs like Brighter. But now the sets they put together, flow better.
In the summer of 98 they decided to put some tracks down and booked 2, 8 hour sessions at Project Recording studio Chesterfield, where they managed to record Brighter, On My Own, Honey Tree, Black and an Outro Track, which became their first CD, ON MY OWN.
With these tracks they entered The Derbyshire Times Band Of the Year contest, where they won a further 10 hours recording time at Project Recording and 10 hours at Priority Recording Studios Sheffield.
At Chesterfield they recorded Dead before Dawn, Cry For Love and METALLICA’s Nothing Else Matters, and at Sheffield they added I Don’t Know and Time For Our Freedom. (The DAT tape label title for I Don’t Know is actually written by the engineer as "Unnamed")
All of the re-mastered recordings have now formed the Dead Before Dawn CD.
If you have not seen them live, do try and get, you won’t be disappointed.