Stiltskin

The video above is "Under the Tree" by Water Babies. You may be thinking why this is in a post about Stiltskin. Well, it turns out that the man behind that tune is Peter Lawlor of Stiltskin. I was somewhat surprised by this considering it sounds nothing like Stiltskin, but it's actually not that unusual once you know the whole story. First here's a reminder of who Stiltskin were with there number one hit "Inside":

When I first heard this on Top of the Pops in 1994 I thought they were another Grunge band from Seattle. At the same time it sounded like they were basically trying to sound exactly like Nirvana and I questioned whether they'd be seen as a credible Grunge band or just a Nirvana wannabe.

The following day people were talking about that Grunge song on Top of the Pops being quite good and the following week it was number one. It turns out they weren't from Seattle though, not even from America, they were a Scottish band based in London. They followed this up with the minor hit "Footsteps" and released an album before calling it a day.

Whilst Grunge was arguably at it's most popular at the time, the charts never really reflected this. Nirvana had the best chart record but had never got any higher than 5, whilst Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden and Stone Temple Pilots had never had a top ten hit by this point, so how did a band nobody had heard of come from nowhere to score a number one?

Well it turns out they weren't really a band before "Inside" came out. Peter Lawlor was asked to write a song for the Levi's advert and this song was it. Kurt Cobain had recently died which arguably made Grunge more popular at that moment in time, so having a Grunge song on the Levi's advert was almost a guaranteed number one. Stiltskin were basically formed on the back of that song, Peter Lawlor had played all the instruments on it and no vocals were in the advert, so presumably they were added later on.

The Water Babies song "Under the Tree" was used in the Vodafone advert, so on that basis it shouldn't be much of a surprise that it's written by Peter Lawlor, because he's basically a man who writes songs for adverts and the style of music would must likely be to do with the nature of the advert.

Stiltskin meanwhile reunited in 2006 with only singer Ray Wilson from the original line up and they've released two albums since.