The Stornoway chronicle, in order

2005 to 2009 — four years before anyone was listening

Brian Briggs and Jon Ouin meet as students in Oxford in 2005 and start playing. They advertise for a bass player; Oli Steadman is the only reply, and brings his brother Rob on drums. In March 2006 BBC Oxford Introducing plays a demo of “I Saw You Blink” from the EP The Early Adventures of Stornoway, and the presenter, Tim Bearder, is suspended for barricading himself in the studio and playing an hour of it.

Two more self-released EPs follow — Letters From Lewis in 2007, On The Rocks in 2008 — and the band headline the first Wood Festival. Then 2009 turns everything: Radio 1’s Big Weekend at Lydiard Park, six sets across Glastonbury, a free concert at Tate Modern on 1 September launching the 10:10 climate campaign, a single launched at the ICA, a first UK tour in October that ends at the Sheldonian Theatre with an orchestra, and in November the first appearance by an unsigned band in the history of Later… with Jools Holland, on a bill with Sting, Norah Jones, Jay-Z and the Foo Fighters. In December they are longlisted for the BBC Sound of 2010.

2010 to 2012 — the label years

The band tour the Highlands, Islands and Ireland in March 2010 and sign to 4AD in the castle grounds at Lews, having finally visited the town they named themselves after. “I Saw You Blink” comes out on 22 March; Beachcomber’s Windowsill on 24 May, straight in at number 14.

What follows is two years of movement: Glastonbury and WOMAD that July, an unplugged session for 4AD in an abandoned doll’s house museum in Iffley, main stages across Europe, a first American tour in December, Australia for Laneway in February 2011, the Pyramid Stage on 25 June 2011, Somerset House with the North Sea Radio Orchestra that July, and a hometown show at the Regal on the Cowley Road in September whose proceeds — and an auctioned guitar — went to conservation charities. A sold-out Shepherd’s Bush Empire closes 2010; the debut takes Album of the Year at the XFM New Music Awards.

2013 to 2015 — Terra Firma and Bonxie

Announced in November 2012 and released the following March, Tales from Terra Firma enters at 26, with a twenty-five-date UK tour and two hometown nights at Oxford Town Hall. In September the band announce a surprise mini-album of outtakes, You Don’t Know Anything, released on 11 November ahead of a tour that closes at the Barbican on 8 December.

In June 2014 they crowdfund the next record and hit 513 per cent of target, with day trips to go zorbing or birdwatching among the rewards, closing the campaign with two sold-out Sheldonian nights. Bonxie arrives on 13 April 2015, produced by Gil Norton, entering at 20 and taking the best reviews of the band’s career.

2016 to 2017 — Stor-no-more

In October 2016, after four dates supporting Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott, the band announce they are stopping. Their statement is worth quoting because it is the thing everybody remembers: After a whole decade of wonderful adventures together, we have decided to call it a day. Stornoway will become ‘Stor-no-more’. Our friendship and love of music remains as strong as ever, but over the last couple of years the winds of change seem to have blown us all in different directions.

The farewell tour runs eleven UK dates, 27 February to 12 March 2017, and ends at the New Theatre in Oxford. Briggs goes back to nature work; that was the plan and it was not a euphemism.

2022 to now — the ending that did not take

Three of the four play Truck Festival and WOMAD Charlton Park in July 2022 and carry on. At WOMAD, Oli Steadman takes the other two to hear the Chinese musician Yijia Tu, who ends up on the next record. Dig the Mountain! is announced on BBC Radio 6 Music in April 2023 and lands that autumn, going top ten on the UK album sales chart — the band’s best placing on anything.

Then a Christmas single about ash dieback with a Welsh male voice choir; a sold-out UK tour in February 2024 and Europe that April; a seventh Glastonbury; a tour of churches ending at the Union Chapel and the acoustic collection Best of Unplucked; a sold-out Royal Albert Hall on 30 March 2026, where they announce Beyonder; a collaboration with Ladysmith Black Mambazo recorded in Durban in May; and the album itself on 25 September 2026.

The posts the band published themselves

The chronicle above is assembled from what the band and their labels announced at the time, and from contemporary press coverage of the shows and releases; the post titles below are the band’s own, in the order they went up.

Stornoway posted news and a blog on their own website for years. Those pages are gone and only partly recoverable, but the record of what was posted survives, numbered in the order it went up. The numbers are the band’s own.

They are worth reading as a list. A band’s news feed is mostly logistics — tour dates, signed posters, a guitar auction — and then occasionally something like “Bye bye Van Blanc”, which is a farewell to a van, or “The Oomphalapompatronium’s coming”, which is a farewell to nothing at all.