Dundee, my home town, was a hot bed of musical talent and the city boasts a rich history of great bands from The Average White Band to The Associates, so it was a good environment to grow up in. At the age of 10 I had a group with my siblings and we played old folks homes and charity events. Then I joined a Scottish country dance band playing guitar and singing. It wasn't until my mid teens that I switched to playing bass and started to seriously consider music as a career.
My first band Danny Wilson signed to Virgin in mid 80s and we enjoyed success on both side of the Atlantic with our first album and especially the hit single 'Mary’s Prayer'. As a band we were more of a studio-based group, so I developed production skills on those early records. I also got heavily into programming drums as we had no drummer, and I turned my hand to learning to play an array of instruments – anything I could get my hands on.
After Danny Wilson folded, I worked with a number of other pop artists – Natalie Imbruglia and Eddi Reader among others – before a new phase of my career started in 1997 when I was asked to write and produce a soundtrack for a Playstation game Earthworm Jim 3. I then spent nearly 10 years working with game companies on both sides of the Atlantic producing for titles such as Enter The Matrix, Amplitude and many more. Writing and producing for games gives you such a buzz as no two projects are ever the same and you can really expand your compositional chops working in many different genres of music.
I’d convinced myself I did not miss the hustle and bustle of touring and recording albums, but in 2010 I was asked to join Simple Minds and that was an offer I couldn’t refuse. So now I have the best of both worlds with the studio writing and production and the live touring.