Band History - The Early Years

Historically, the TATE! story began around 1983 when Mark and Phil ‘formally’ met due to a less than healthy interest in Ultravox – though that is where the musical similarities stopped.

After a short burst of teenage activity in a band called Standing Tactics, they parted company musically (remaining as close friends) and shot off at tangents. Phil being the king of local Indie, while Mark pursued Rock God status.

Fourteen (!) years later, after what seemed like hundreds of bands between them slipping under the bridge, Mark went solo, using nothing but guitar and voice to bludgeon his newly developed singer song-writing style onto the unsuspecting Manx Public. After a few years of proving the worth of his songs, and after much nagging, Phil agreed to play Bass, and with him came Martin, a talented, enthusiastic drummer with enough youth on his side to make Mark and Phil still feel vaguely valid.

The six months previous to this line up had seen a small number of gigs under the ‘Mark Cleator Band’ banner, using two well known Manx musicians Trevor Parkes (Drums) and Martin Jones (Bass). Martin damaged a finger seriously delaying rehearsals and in good rock’n’roll fashion he (and Trevor) were swiftly replaced for more energetic performers!