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Snow Patrol

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Gary Lightbody's band, together since the mid-nineties and long past needing to prove the big chorus — slow-build alt-rock that became a stadium language.

Snow Patrol began in 1994 as a band called Shrug, formed by University of Dundee students Gary Lightbody, Michael Morrison and Mark McClelland. After a period performing as Polarbear and releasing the EP Starfighter Pilot in 1997, the group took the name Snow Patrol and added drummer Jonny Quinn. Lightbody, a Northern Irish singer and guitarist, has remained the band's only original member throughout.

The band spent its early years on Jeepster Records, releasing Songs for Polarbears in 1998 and When It's All Over We Still Have to Clear Up in 2001, neither of which sold well. A move to Polydor in 2002 brought guitarist Nathan Connolly into the lineup and pushed the sound from scrappy indie rock toward something built for bigger rooms.

Final Straw, released the following year, gave Snow Patrol its breakthrough with the single "Run" and was certified five times platinum in the UK. Bassist Mark McClelland left in 2005 and was replaced by Paul Wilson, around the point the band's slow-build verses and heavily amplified choruses were becoming its signature.

Eyes Open followed in 2006, topping the UK Albums Chart and becoming the best-selling British record of that year. Its single "Chasing Cars" was reported in 2019 to be the most-played song of the century on UK radio, and it gave the band a lasting international audience beyond the initial UK success of Final Straw.

Later albums kept the same formula: A Hundred Million Suns in 2008, Fallen Empires in 2011, Wildness in 2018 and The Forest Is the Path in 2024. Quinn and Wilson left the group in 2023, leaving Lightbody, Connolly and keyboardist Johnny McDaid as the current lineup. Across their career Snow Patrol have won seven Meteor Ireland Music Awards and picked up Brit and Grammy nominations.

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