In the late 80s I had played drums with the very bad but very fun punk/metal band The Killer Frisbees in the family garage. I had also jammed a few times with the (very) short-lived hard rock band Graveyard Ticket which, consisting as it did of drinking buddies and other debauched wretches, never really got off the ground. But that's another story for another time :-)

In 1991 I went to Edinburgh's Telford College to do a mixed course of maths, communication studies and geography. At lunchtimes I gravitated toward the art students because we had some friends and favorite pubs in common and we all looked a bit weird.

Three of these 'teenage art punks' mentioned that they had a 'sort-of' band but were unable to practice due to their drummer's broken arm. We arranged a jamming session in the guitarist's mum's living room and I turned up expecting to jam a few songs and go home. I wasn't taking it too seriously but was a little nervous as I had only ever really jammed with close friends. I hardly knew these guys but they obviously knew and loved music.

I was acting as a roadie for various local bands and was deeply involved in the live music scene although more as a consumer than a producer. I hadn't played in a band for a while but had been practicing, learning to play along to bands like Slayer and Metallica - two of the fastest bands on the planet at that time. I was fairly confident that I could keep up.

Eventually I coaxed a couple of upbeat songs from them. We did punk covers of stuff by The Monkey's and The Beach Boys and had a blast. Keith Patton, The guitarist, was a fellow Slayer fan and we pulled together a respectable cover of Mandatory Suicide. I impressed the guys by playing this twice and not dying. We then decided to try playing some of their stuff a bit faster and it sounded fantastic. The expressions of intense concentration became grins as we punked things up and had a ball. At some point during the session the crippled drummer phoned to see how things were going and if I remember rightly was informed that he had been replaced. In the space of one night we had gone from being four guys jamming to being a cohesive unit. We were officially a band.

Eventually Keith's heroically tolerant father asked us to turn the noise down.

I got to know and love the rest of the band very quickly. They were easy guys to like - smart, calm and thoughtful they cared about art for art's sake so we got on well.

Phil Jones was a creative storm and a musical swiss-army-knife - providing bass, guitar, lead and backing vocals to the mix. He was a prolific artist, writer, graphic artist and musical alchemist. He just exploded with ideas and the initiative to implement them. He had the coldest flat in Edinburgh but that didn't stop me moving into it when he left.

Ross Angus was quieter and more reserved, a great guitarist and competent bassist he brought a subtle and understated complexity to the band. Thinking back I'm embarrassed by how little I know about Ross. He was a good friend but I guess our private lives did not cross-over as much as with the others. He had a better taste in pubs I guess :-)

Keith Patton was a fellow metalhead at heart and it shows in his guitar tracks. Always hyped and full of energy and enthusiasm he put much of the bounce in the band. His heavy riffs and noisy solos gave the music an edgy energy. Keith's dad John Patton was a huge Sunlight fan and gave us a lot of support.

As for me, Stuart Morrison. I guess I helped make the band a lot faster and heavier. I like to think I helped give the guys the confidence to move from the living-room to the stage and eventually the studio. I also had the uncanny ability to fit the entire band and all our kit into my Dad's Vauxhall Cavalier and still have room for a small roadie.

The line-up was set. Three relatively respectable art students with guitars and Animal from The Muppets on drums.

We practiced a couple of nights a week at Queen Margaret College Student Union (taking advantage of the subsidised bar) then at Dalgetty Bay Sailing Club (which had an even cheaper bar). Eventually we took up permanent residence at the infamous Niddry Street practice rooms in Edinburgh where the bar and toilet facilities were best described as 'bring-your-own-bottle'. How we scraped the rent together for that place I'll never know.

We hung out, rehearsed and had a lot of fun getting our act together. Rehersals were always enjoyable and never a chore. The band gelled musically and despite our vastly different musical tastes the band was a real democracy. Everyone was allowed to make their mark on all the songs. There were no egos, no arguments and all the songs were a real group effort.

Generally Phil and Ross would bring in some bits of songs and we would bounce the ideas around each other. We jammed a lot just to see where things went and a lot of our stuff was written almost by accident. Phil would generally write the lyrics to fit the music often coming up with three or four completely different approaches to a song of which we would use one or more. Some songs had different lyrics every time we played them :-)

We would record rehearsals on a basic tape recorder and Phil's four-track so we didn't lose good ideas and passed the better stuff on to friends and family to comment on. We soon had a core of fans who encouraged us to get up on the stage and strut our stuff.

After a few months writing and rehearsing we got our first real gig.