Gomez

Gomez are an English band from Southport. Their first album, Bring It On, won the Mercury Music Prize in 1998.

==Early career=

The genesis of Gomez was the meeting of four friends from Southport. Guitarist and vocalist Ian Ball and drummer Olly Peacock had previously played together in a local heavy metal band Severed. They joined with guitarist Tom Gray, vocalist / keyboardist / bassist Paul Blackburn. Ian Ball met vocalist / guitarist Ben Ottewell from Matlock Bath in Derbyshire at Sheffield University, where they were both studying.

The band played their first gig together in late 1996 in Leeds, without a formal name. The band left a sign out for a friend of theirs named Gomez to indicate that this was the site of their first gig. People saw the sign and assumed that the band's name was Gomez - the name stuck.

The band started recording four-track demos in a garage in Southport soon after. A bidding war erupted when they sent the demos to recording labels, with the band finally signing with Virgin Records' subsidiary, Hut, in 1997.

==Bring It On - career success=

Gomez entered the recording studio in 1997 to turn their de...