BIOGRAPHY
One of the most dedicated bands around, richlife have developed as individual musicians and as a band over the past 4 years. With front-man Rich still only 17 and the rest of the band aged at 18 and 20 this band clearly has immense potential.
richlife have plenty of gig experience, having played audiences up to 10,000 and having played along-side top British pop acts including Girls Aloud, The Sugababes, Rachel Stevens, Jamelia, Darius and many more, as well as playing along side the legendary Slade.
Their trademark sound of tight, upbeat Rock along with their 4 part vocal harmonies and great musicianship, as well as their lively stage act gets a great response from the crowd every time they play!
"now here's the story..."
richlife was formed in 2002 by Richard Sharples (13 y/o) and Nathan Anderson-Barr (14 y/o) under the name of Ricochet. Rich and Nath both attended Kineton school in Warwickshire and had become good friends having lived in nearby villages. The band was originally put together with some other friends from Kineton school. In 2003 Rich was introduced to Ben Gurney (15 y/o), a guitarist from Brackley, Northamptonshire, by their guitar teacher, Stevan Aleksic. After just one practise with the band Ben joined as the new lead guitarist. A few weeks later Ben introduced Bass player and good friend James Archer (15 y/o) to the band, who joined as a full time member of the band several weeks later.
With the 4-piece line-up complete, Ricochet, as they were known at the time, began the task of building up a repertoire of classic Rock songs from the 70's and 80's, this being an important influence on the richlife sound today. After just 3 practises the band attended a local music jam where they played their first live performance. Having showed a huge amount of potential during this first performance, the owners of the venue booked the band for their first paying gig, one month from then.
After impressing the audience and venue at this gig, they were then booked to play as a support band for local band KSA. It was during this gig that Ben and Jamie ran into an old school friend, Jenna Hone, a talented young singer who had loved their set and asked to join the band. Ben invited Jenna along to their next practise and within a few weeks they decided to take her on as a female vocalist.
With a solid line up sorted and a repertoire growing to over 2 hours of music, Ricochet started to take on bigger and better gigs. They played Pubs, Weddings, Parties and Festivals both locally and around the country, gaining a good reputation at each venue and in late 2003 got the opportunity to play along side The Nolans, The Real Thing and the legendary Slade at a 70's weekend at a holiday camp in Brean Sands. The band, aged just 14 to 16 blew the audience away with their performance and were asked to play a second set during the main evening event ahead of Slade.
Ricochet continued into the new year playing more gigs and improving their performance and in March 2004 the band was invited back to Brean Sands to play at another 70's weekend featuring performances from Alvin Stardust, The Sensational American Drifters and The Rubettes. The response from the audience was even better this time and after being told they had "more people up on the dance floor than The Rubettes did all night", they were crowned "The future of the 70's" by the event organisers.
The rest of 2004 saw more gigs for the band and they really started to get a feel for playing music for a living. During the summer of 2004, Ricochet were invited to play at both the Bristol GWR Balloon Fiesta and the Pirate FM Summer Party in the South West. It was at these festivals that Ricochet got to play in front of 10,000 people as a warm up band for some of the UK's top pop acts, including Girls Aloud, The Sugababes, Rachel Stevens, Darius and more. So after hanging out with more popstars than they could keep track of in the VIP tents backstage and playing at two major pop concerts in one week, in front of 10,000 screaming people, the band decided this was what they wanted to do. This was what it was all about. All the years of practising had paid off.
The band now decided they needed to start writing their own material in order to get any further. Over the next few months, Ricochet needed to start discovering who they really were, what they sounded like as an original band and what sort of image they needed to have. It was during this discovery that the band realised that the set up with Jenna, unfortunately, wasn't working. This gave the band the opportunity to experiment with a different 5-piece line up. Leigh Chambers, a brilliant guitarist and vocalist, joined the band.
Ricochet performed a few gigs during March but April soon came and brought another problem for the band; Rich and Nath had now finished school and had both taken on jobs working for South West Audio, a leading sound company in Bristol. The months passed by and Ricochet were finding it hard to get a full line up for every gig due to the conflicting hours of work that Rich and Nath were working. Frustration grew within the band and many discussions were held about the direction in which everybody wanted to take the band.
Eventually Rich and Nath decided that they missed playing in the band and although they knew they'd still need jobs back home, both believed that the band had a real chance of success so came back to make it happen. By this time, Ben had begun writing some original songs. These new songs opened up a whole new direction for the band, but as the original 4-piece, to allow the songs and the band members to work at their full potential.
In September 2005 Ben began his University degree course. It was here that he wrote the majority of the original material for their debut album. Although the band were not actively gigging during this time, they were developing a clear direction for the future. During the next 7 months Ben became a regular commuter between Stafford and Banbury to ensure that the band could give enough time to develop their songs, sound and new identity as an original and exciting new Rock band.
In May 2006 the band descended on The Lodge recording studios in Northampton and with the help of Max Read (Engineer/Producer) they recorded their debut album "Real to Reel".
With the album recorded, it became clear that the band needed to develop a strategy to take them forward to a successful launch. With the help of a marketing consultant the band identified some critical issues that they needed to address. One of these being that the existing band name was not globally registerable. So, the challenge was to find a unique, registerable name, which would be both memorable and would stand the test of time. richlife was born.
richlife are now in the process of releasing their first two singles from this album, "What You Wanna Be" and "Back By Choice". They are busy promoting the singles and have commenced live radio appearances and gigs to help them in their attack on the UK music market.
What happens next? Well surely that's up to you guys!
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