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History
Chris Martin, Guy Berryman, Jonny Buckland and Will Champion met at the University College of London in 1997. There, they set up one of Britains top guitar bands, Coldplay, in the process they became best of friends.
Chris Martin grew up in Devon, he has been playing the guitar since he was 15. In the band he plays Guitar, lead vocals, keyboard and piano.
Jon Buckland, on Lead Guitar comes from Mold in Wales and has been playing the Guitar since the age of 11.
Will Champion originally comes from Southampton and has been playing the drums from an early age.
Guy Berryman comes from Fife in Scotland originally, but moved to Kent at the age of 12. He has been playing the bass since the age of 13.
The band's first release was entitled Safety EP, it was limited to only 500 copies because the band only had £200 to spare to produce it. The three songs, recorded at Sync City Studios, were originaly intended as a demo, but the band were so pleased with it that they released it commercially in May 1998. All 500 copies were to be distributed around London, but only 50 copies were left after most had been given away.
The EP served it's original purpose when Debs Wild of Universal records was enthusiastic and gave a copy to Dan Keeling of Parlophone Records, Caroline Ellery of BMP Publishing also recieved a copy, and the band signed deals with the two companies in early summer of 1999.
In April of 1999, the band had already released Brothers and Sisters under Fierce Panda records who had watched them play at the Camden Falcon on the 7th December 1998; they asked the band to record a song for them. Because of this, NME tipped Coldplay to be one of the bands of 1999.
'Brothers and Sisters' was played by Radio 1’s Steve Lamacq and reached 92 in the charts, Coldplay were gaining fans in very important places.
The way had been paved for the release, in October 1999, of The Blue Room EP, on their new label, Parlophone. After Coldplay had played at various festivals in the summer and had supported Catatonia , the band felt themselves sufficantly ready to record their first album.
The recording session, though, didn't go as well as planned and Parlophone were pushing for another release.
The band released the Bigger Stronger EP, with 'Such A Rush', and 'Bigger Stronger' reappearing from the Safety EP and new songs 'Don’t Panic', 'High Speed' and 'See You Soon' filling up the five track release.
The band soon recieved critisism for their Radiohead comparisions, but they could only be partially denied, as the track had been written during the wake of OK Computer.
Their first entry into the UK top 40 came in the form of Shiver which reached number 35 in March 2000. The band were recording new songs, and the album's tracklisting was beginning to change. So due to the uncertainty to the track listing, none of the recorded songs could feature as b-sides, this meant the band could set aside just one evening to record both the b-sides, 'For You' and 'Careful Where You Stand". The single though was recieved very well; the Radiohaed critisisms had been lifted and airplay on Radio 1 and other stations as well as showings of the video on MTV helped bring Coldplay into the light.
Their next release was to be Yellow. With the album nearly completed, the success of it depended upon this release, but then came an excellent performance on Saturday afternoon at Glastonbury, later called the highlight of the festival, which instantly shot Coldplay to fame, and number 4 in the UK singles chart.
The single did do well for the album, as 'Parachutes' entered the chart at number 1 a few weeks later. The album gained them many new supporters, and a Mercury Music Prize nomination, which they just missed out on to favourite Badly Drawn Boy.
