Heyooo! My name is Lliam Storms, seriously it's not a nickname despiteHeyooo! My name is Lliam Storms, seriously it's not a nickname despite what many believe, and I guess I am to be considered a bit of a musician?!
I started messing around on drums when I was about 14 and for a very short period I pretended to play them well enough to join a band which was playing a mix of punk, cross-over and nu-metal... this WAS the tail end of the 90's so all is forgivable, right?
Anyway at some point I had started writing lyrics and stupidly decided that what I had to say HAD to be heard so I decided I wanted to learn guitar in order to have a proper carriage to carry my "lyrics".
I was fortunate enough to have music loving, supportive parents so this helped shape both my music as well as, to much dismay, my confidence/arrogance and belief in my songs. So yeah I was raised on a cocktail of musical influences at home from ACDC to Johnny Cash, The Beatles to Bob Marley and then of course being lucky enough to be an 80's child growing up in the 90's I got
the punk revival and the golden era of hip hop music and culture.
My first somewhat serious band I co-founded at 15 when I was living in Maastricht, The Netherlands (my mum is originally Dutch and e lived there a while)which was an Oi! Punk band called Close Combat. We played a handful of shows, released a mini album and
a full length before I left the country, and thus the band, and moved to London. I tried starting a new band there but nothing
ever came of it unfortunately but that didn't stop me from writing and recording at home. At some point, in 2007 I think, being unhappily bored and feeling stagnant in England I decided to move to Greece. Greece has always been the closest thing to home for me in Europe (I am from New Zealand) as we had spent a few years on Paros when I was a young kid and summer vacations there in my teenage years so making the choice to move there was pretty easy.
It was there I hooked up with Billie B. and Nestor Gkikas and we started playing a bunch of my folk/acoustic songs and
punking them the punk up. I owned a small underground bar then called "Chapters" and my business-partner at the time Tasos was a drummer so with him we finished the line up which became the heaven-wreckingly awesome "The Beggar Belief"!
We played a bunch of shows, recorded our debut EP and then an LP "Coming Straight Through Crooked Streets" (out on Smith&Miller Records) with our new drummer Vaggelis (Chain Cult, Junkheart, Feral Kids and a million more bands), went on hiatus due to distances and personal reasons and just recently did we make a
comeback from our new base in Thessaloniki with two new members on bass and drums.
In the meantime, prior to our comeback, I had also started another band called Priorities" in Athens as I had left the island for the big dirty city.
Priorities was started by myself and Aris (Omixlh, Feral Kids and more) as we wanted to head back into the Oi! direction again with mid-tempo football-chanty songs. We recorded an EP and the full length is way overdue but we had some recording issues so: hold on a little longer, please!
I also have a project called "The Trade" with a debut EP on Rebellion Records NL and a full length in the final stages, a traditional folk band (mostly Irish) called "Rope's End" with which we hope to record our debut album over the next few months and most recently I joined a new Hardcore band on vocals.
My love for rap made me attempt rapping which was not very bad - it was fucking terrible - but I do still make dirty-90's-east coast-boom-bap beats.One day I will click well enough with some rappers to get that shit out into the world too.
Other than that I also play a lot of acoustic shows and have recently started promoting myself as a solo "artist" (I hate the word artist) and have been performing my singer-songwriter stuff which I have been writing for forever. Its folk with some americana and country, stories of broken hearts and whiskey
and more of your general cry yourself to sleep or slit your wrist type songs...happy stuff obviously.
I do not make a living off of any of this of course so I have primarily been bartending the majority of my adult life in order to make some money to support my sick addiction of underground music and lifestyle. I am actually a pretty decent photographer though (I shockingly even had a solo exhibition in NYC yeaaaars ago) and probably could have done much better there had a fore-mentioned addiction not claimed its toll. I recently started taking photos again however and do hope and intend to indulge in it greatly once more. I also have been getting into script writing and directing and you can see my debut with the video clip we did together with the very talented Xaroula Stergiadou for The Beggar Belief track "The Ones You Lost"! More is on its way!!
And there you have it. 5 minutes of your precious life wasted reading something you never asked for about a guy you will never give a shit about. Happy birthday!
