In the beginning, which wasn’t very long ago, Jack Steadman, Jamie MacColl, and Suren de Saram were in the same class at school together. They were 15 years old, and they formed a band called Bombay Bicycle Club. (Why Bombay Bicycle Club? Why not?).

Gigs proved hard to come by. They weren’t allowed to enter the school’s Battle of the Bands (some kids from the year above wouldn’t let them), and they didn’t get through the first heat of the school talent competition (passed over in favour of a juggler). Still, they managed to play a couple of scuzzy London venues, and made some demos in Jack’s front room and Jamie’s basement, and entered these into the Road to V competition. When they got the call to say they were through to the finals, they thought it was a prank. It wasn’t. They won, and opened the V festival in August 2006.

By this time, they had a new bass player, Ed Nash, and several thousand friends on Myspace, and were selling out gigs on the local north London circuit. It was at one of these gigs, at the Barfly in Camden, that Jim Abbiss heard them, and offered to produce them. (Successful producers are always referred to as legendary, but Jim really is a legend: he’d done the Arctic Monkeys, Editors, Kasabian, DJ Shadow, and loads of other stuff that BBC love). So in October 2006, they made their first EP with Jim at the Chapel Studios in Lincolnshire. 

The EP is called “The Boy I Used To Be”, and BBC are releasing it on their own label, Mmm… Records. It’s got four tracks: The Hill, Sixteen, Open House, and Cancel on Me. People are already writing about their “sheer youthful passion” and “magical choruses that lock themselves in your head”. Jack’s been called a “tripped out Casablancas” and the stage invasions at their gigs are legendary (in Camden, anyway). But what BBC would like is for you to discover their music for yourself. It doesn’t sound like anyone else, not really. It’s about parties and drugs and girls, and talking about the meaning of life, and growing up, and never wanting to grow old. They’re 17, but you don’t have to be a teenager to love these songs. In the words of NME: “Don’t be deceived by their age – there’s a lifetime of experience in these glorious tunes.”