Sunstinger Release Crushing New Single and Announce EP Release (Shoegaze/Post-shoegaze)
Born from post-industrial areas of Scotland, where wounds from the socio-economic decline have barely healed to scars, and we now find abandoned industry being reclaimed by nature’s slow but unrelenting march. It’s no surprise that when asked about their influences Scottish heavy-post-shoegazers Sunsting
‘Spare Me the Rapture’ is the band’s third EP, following 2001’s ‘Beyond the Frame’ and 2004’s highly acclaimed ‘Worthless’. These, alongside a prolific number of stand-alone singles, have helped cement the band as one of the most essential voices on the UK shoegaze scene. Further solidified by the band’s reputation for their intense live shows, foregoing any ‘banter’, the band prefer to cultivate an atmosphere throughout, letting the music envelop and wash over the crowd, offering transcendence through volume, fuzz and reverb. This veritable rep attracted US label Sonic Rising Records, who re-issued the band’s debut EP on a range of retina widening vinyl.
Sunstinger are made up of Taylor Wright (vocals/guitar), David McCulloch (guitar), Scott Gourlay (guitar), Bill Anderson (Bass) and newest addition, Colm Boyle (Drums) who joined at the start of 2026. The addition of Colm on drums seems to have reinvigorated the band, adding a new pulse and forward motion to the tracks on ‘Spare Me the Rapture’.
Title track, and first single, ‘Spare Me the Rapture’ follows, a call and response between guitars comes as close to loud/quiet/loud as Sunstinger get and gives the track its first hook. Colm’s machine gun snare drum signals the chorus, and it hits like the sun parting the clouds after the rain. Taylor intones ‘But I don’t care, so take me there’, providing a massive 90’s alt-rock hook. Sunstinger have never sounded like this before, pushing tempo’s and stretching into new sonic territory all while still maintaining their sound. The three guitars provide layer after layer for listeners to delve into, speaker shredding fuzz, reverse reverbs and modulated reverbs that wrap around melodies into infinity. Bill’s bass keeps everything locked in providing the gravitational centre for guitars to swirl around. Lyrically the track exemplifies the theme of the EP, finding comfort in misery, acceptance of your environment and choosing to live within rather looking to a rapture that will never come. The band took a heavy influence from Glasgow’s industrial landscape for the track but viewed from an outsiders Lens. The line ‘my blood couldn’t brave the iron stain’ is a reference to the struggle of finding your own way.
Following their own demoing process the band decamped to Organic Audio in Glasgow to work with producer Sean Mitchell. With a clear goal from the outset to capture the bands raw, suffocating energy of their live sound. The band decided not to indulge in the gear the studio may have offered, opting to record exactly how it’s played live.
When it came time to give the EP a visual language the band wanted the art to be a direct extension of the music’s headspace. It looks like physiological heat signatures trapped in the dark. Human shapes dissolving into deep blues and burning oranges. The visual equivalent of painting the walls in a dark room. Romanticizing your surroundings just to survive in them.
‘Spare Me the Rapture’ finds Sunstinger at their most expansive yet, unafraid to explore new sounds and a new approach to their songwriting. The band have mined their ideas to depths and in doing so produced a record that acknowledges their past but takes strides towards a larger, wider sonic palette. Lyrics that are raw and honest, brutally so at times, show a vulnerability that only adds a further dimension to the emotion that is wrapped up and conveyed by the volume, the crashing drums and crushing fuzz. Somehow it feels like only a beginning to something.
