With new album Clann set to complete a trilogy of albums begun with 2020’s Sia, and the 2023 release "Light Up", Solstice have been busier over the last three years than they probably have been for the last couple of decades, playing numerous shows including high profile festival appearances at Glastonbury, Cropredy and Milan. Enjoying a level of acclaim and critical praise that surprises even the band themselves, Andy Glass almost has to pinch himself – “Suddenly there’s this out-pouring of creativity. We’re making music that’s as good as [anything] I’ve ever been involved in making. And people are responding to it. It’s absolutely extraordinary... I mean surprise doesn’t cover it. I never saw anything like this coming... and it feels incredible. It’s what’s driving me now having never been ambitious in the past.”

Voted Best Band in Prog magazine’s latest annual Prog Awards, and arriving on an exuberant wave of positivity created by previous albums Sia (2020) and Light Up (2022), both widely acclaimed within the prog community and beyond, Clann completes the most recent phase of Solstice’s 40-plus year career.

As band founder, composer and guitarist (winner of Prog magazine’s most recent Best Guitarist Prog Award) Andy Glass explains, “[Sia] made me realise the potential and by the time we were working on Light Up the whole band had raised its game. I believed then that a trilogy of albums was what it would take to create our best work and track that journey. Clann is the final album in the Sia Trilogy and it’s everything I’d hoped it would be. Let’s hope the universe likes it too.”

Formed in Aylesbury, UK, Solstice played their first gig at Berkhamsted Town Hall in early 1980. Although very much considered part of the early 80s British neo-prog movement, sharing stages with the likes of Marillion, IQ and Pallas, Solstice drew more on folk, folk-rock, neo-classical and psychedelic space-rock than most of their contemporaries. The band gained a small legion of devoted fans touring extensively, playing many notable venues such as The Marquee in London and The Friars in Aylesbury as well as at the prestigious Reading Festival in 1983. Although releasing self-financed cassette demos during this period, they didn’t record their debut studio album until 1984’s Silent Dance, before this chapter of the band’s career came to an end with Solstice splitting up in 1985.

The band’s live work has been fundamental to their growing popularity with a wide audience demographic. Always more than just a magical musical experience, the band’s gigs are consistently celebratory, invigorating, warm hearted and a lot of fun. The live work has fed directly into Andy Glass’s writing.

“One of the joys of this beautiful band is the energy on stage," says Andy Glass, "and that’s definitely played into the writing for the Clann album. I only need to think about the gigs to imagine the possibilities and for the ideas to start forming.”