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The Fratellis

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Glasgow trio whose mid-2000s indie boom hits still function as mass singalongs — 'Chelsea Dagger' as unavoidable terrace anthem, plus two decades of albums since.

The Fratellis formed in Glasgow in 2005, taking their name from the criminal family in The Goonies. Jon, Baz and Mince Fratelli are not related; the surname is a stage name shared by the group. The band played its first show on 4 March 2005 and signed to Fallout Records after fewer than ten gigs.

Their debut album, Costello Music, appeared in September 2006 and reached number two on the UK chart, spending eighty-three weeks in the Top 100 and eventually selling more than a million copies in Britain. The lead single "Henrietta" reached number nineteen, while "Chelsea Dagger" and "Whistle for the Choir" both became UK top ten hits.

Costello Music paired garage-rock guitars with pub-singalong choruses, music-hall phrasing and character-driven lyrics, arriving in the middle of the mid-2000s British indie boom. The album's success earned the Fratellis the 2007 Brit Award for British Breakthrough Act, voted for by BBC Radio One listeners.

"Chelsea Dagger" has had a long second life as a sports-arena chant, far outlasting the album that produced it. A second album, Here We Stand, followed in 2008, after which the band went on hiatus. They returned in 2013 with We Need Medicine, a record that sold poorly and dropped out of the UK Top 100 within a week.

Chart fortunes recovered with Eyes Wide, Tongue Tied (2015), In Your Own Sweet Time (2018) and Half Drunk Under a Full Moon (2021), each reaching the top five in Scotland. Across these records the trio widened their palette to take in soul, glam and pop arrangements while keeping the melodic directness of the early material.

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