Lost Penguin Mourned

So here it is: the end. Lost Penguin, the band I never really admitted to being in, have split up after 100 gigs.

I only really started the band with Matt and Blue to play one gig and to test the thresholds of the music industry and media - to build hype around something and then crush it. It's safe to say that plan didn’t quite come together as predicted. However much I sometimes felt that all three of us were embarrassed to say we were in Lost Penguin, especially after the shows when we only managed to play two songs, we can all at least be proud that we did make some kind of impact.

For three chancers who didn’t have a clue how to write or play songs, we did pretty well (and that's where a lot of the animosity towards us came from). We played in five different countries, did a live session for Radio 1 in the famous John Peel room at Maida Vale, got in the famous Festive Fifty, appeared in a few mags, got radio play, and released two sell-out singles... not bad for a bunch of talentless pricks, really.

Cheesy as it sounds, despite all our arguments, we came out a really close-knit trio. That's no surprise, though: we came across a lot of shit along the way. We seemed to gather all kinds of hatred towards us, especially from Time Out and the Drowned In Sound forums. There was never a shortage of heckling at Lost Penguin gigs, and we even offended someone so much they decided to come on stage and fight us. Still, we expected that: we were, after all, a band who played one-minute songs about ice cream, abolishing religion, and rioting.

At our last gig, joined by Andrew Moran of the Violets on the drums, we played what was to be our best ever show, performed fittingly in front of a bunch of delinquents who came down from Coventry to see us (one sporting a superb Mohawk) and squat kids courtesy of Charliegh Blue. There was moshing, blood, sweat and tears. A perfect end to a less-than-perfect career.