Liz: I started as a keyboard player, really loving travelling and backing lots of different singers. Having a few songs released early on was encouraging, song-writing is always my favourite thing. Some fantastic times have been spent playing in orchestra pits and on stage in theatres for musicals and variety shows, with some really excellent musicians. Time on a cruise ship was interesting, sailing from New Zealand via Hong Kong, Singapore, India and Africa to the Med, playing each night for dancing. It's great to be based in a studio now, and the challenge of writing so many different kinds of music from Hip Hop to Gregorian Chant is one that keeps you on your toes - You never know what the next phone call will bring....
Gavin: I turned my hobby into a career and played bass guitar as a freelance player, playing on tours across the UK & Europe in the 90's with several artists including Grammy nominated Dove Award winner Margaret Becker, Chris Eaton (Janet Jackson, Amy Grant), Brian Kennedy (Van Morrison, Riverdance and lately Eurovision for Ireland), Grammy nominee Jessy Dixon. I developed my writing, arranging and engineering skills along the way, producing records for Alliance Records, Small Dog Records and But! Records.
During the 90's we established ourselves as a live 'act', filling in any downtime between other tours and shows. We cut our teeth playing on the infamous Northern Club circuit, and soon graduated to more salubrious (and better paying!) corporate events around the UK. It was while playing our way around the world in the lounge bar of a cruise ship we decided to concentrate on our writing - hence the website name 2inabar.com.
In 1998 we released our first instrumental CD designed for media use, part of the Notepad CD range of Library Music that has now supplied over 1000 Media Production companies. In 2002 we launched a music download website for our music, which won a national E-Commerce Award for it's innovative use of technology, together with a cash prize - very nice! Our music has become widely used on most of the UK's TV networks including the BBC and ITV, and many more television networks and houseold "brand names" worldwide.
We have supplied music to corporate clients large and small including The Prime Minister's Office, Sony, Disney, Coca Cola, IBM, British Telecom, Intel, and Unilever. We've also written music for major music libraries KPM, Focus and Musichouse. If you've heard commercial radio across England, you've probably heard us on one of the many advertisements we have written for local and regional stations such as 2CR, Wave, TalkSport, Virgin, Arrow, Capital Gold.
Songwriting has been a pleasurable sideline for us, we've had our songs performed by several artists, enjoying chart placings in Canada, USA, UK and various other countries. Our song "Back Home To Me" was profiled by i-Tunes in the USA, from Sophie Milman's debut album, which went #1 on the i-tunes Jazz chart in USA, Canada, Japan, Sweden and France, also achieving sales at #14 on USA Billboard Jazz Chart . We've had a #2 hit with our song "Completely", something of a suprise - as the record company said to us: "the good news is that it's reached #2, the bad news is - that's in Thailand!". "Completely" was on Jodie Brooke-Wilson's debut album, which also achieved no.1 in the Phillipines. "Completely" was also on the "Unforgettable" album, reaching #7 in the UK Jazz/Blues chart.