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Sanctuary Rig was a long time forming.
Back in 2001, Mark Rae answered an ad in Loot looking for a keyboard player to join a so-called progressive rock band called Magic Circle, featuring a certain Kim Buttress on drums.
It soon became clear to Mark that Magic Circle were going nowhere so, when the opportunity came to join Genesis tribute band In The Cage, he grasped it with both hands.
Mark gigged all over the UK and Europe with In The Cage but, as is the way with these things, in November 2003 it came time to part company.
Meanwhile, Kim had also left Magic Circle and had played with ELP tribute band Brain Salad and then original band G-Marq.
In May 2003 Kim joined Vella where he was soon joined by Andy Trickett, playing several gigs in London.
Vella were looking for a keyboard player, so Kim invited Mark along to see how it would work out, but it didn't, so Mark joined The Occupiers who released the EP Ultrasound in 2004, which died a spectacular death.
By now Vella were breaking up and Mark had left The Occupiers so, in April 2004, Andy, Kim and Mark got together and Sanctuary Rig was born.
The next few months were spent in frantic songwriting and, by July 2004, the band had nearly two hours of original material ready to record and gig.
In July 2004 Paul McNamara joined, and the band was nearly complete.
August and September 2004 saw the band rehearse steadily and audition a couple of singers, one of whom was stunningly good but, sadly, was too busy with other musical projects to be able to commit to the band.
During this time, it had become clear that Kim's unique drumming style wasn't right for the band and in October 2004 the search for a new drummer began in earnest.
October 2004 witnessed the arrival of Richard Slade, and a particularly prolific burst of songwriting from Andy, but, sadly, no sign of a lead vocalist...
November 2004 saw the arrivel of Jim Faupel, and now the Riggers were complete!
February 2005 marked the band's live debut, at Pendley Manor in Tring, followed by several other gigs in and around London.
In May 2005, following a bit of a break due to illness, Andy left the band.
A major personality, musician, songwriter and friend like that would be virtually impossible to replace so we didn't even try.
Instead, Jim assumed the role of lead guitarist, and the band set about the process of finding a new lead vocalist.
Over the course of the next few weeks, we auditioned several potential lead vocalists.
However, we had set ourself one main criterion - the new guy would have to be at least as good a singer as Jim - and we simply weren't able to find one.
We were already sounding great as a four-piece anyway, and that's the way it remains.
Weeks turned into months which saw another spurt of prolific song-writing, with everyone getting in on it this time.
By October 2005, we had upwards of three hours worth of original material, so decided it was time (finally!) to head into the studio.
We booked ourselves into City Studios in sunny Welwyn Garden City run by the legendary Bob Bradbury, and recorded four brand-new songs, released in November 2005 as our debut EP "Sail On".
The four songs on the EP sounded great and, to our great astonishment, people starting buying it!
By this time we were itching to get back out live, and we did our first gig as a four-piece on Friday 13th January 2006.
We took most of 2007 off for one reason or another, mainly the other...
We reconvened in late 2007 and got ourselves ready to record Khnosti.
We decamped to Riverway Studios in Harlow, rehearsed through most of February 2008 and by the end of May we had all 14 songs recorded. The long-awaited album was released on 14 July 2008.
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