Porcupine Tree

A hoax

Porcupine Tree began in Hemel Hempstead in 1987 as a joke. Steven Wilson, whose main band at the time was No-Man, dreamed it up with his friend Malcolm Stocks and wrote a fake history for it, presenting it as a 1970s group with a long imaginary discography. Wilson soon became its only creator. Delerium Records, a small label run by the people behind the underground magazine Freakbeat, released On the Sunday of Life... in early 1992. It gathered two limited cassettes, and its first pressing of a thousand vinyl copies sold out. Up the Downstair followed in May 1993.

Late that year the project became a band, with Richard Barbieri on keyboards, Colin Edwin on bass and Chris Maitland on drums. Their first show, on 4 December 1993 at the Nag's Head in High Wycombe, sold out. The Sky Moves Sideways (1995), Signify (1996), Stupid Dream (1999) and Lightbulb Sun (2000) followed, and after an American tour in 2001 they signed with Lava, an Atlantic subsidiary whose roster included Kid Rock and Matchbox Twenty.

In Absentia

Maitland was dismissed in February 2002 after eight years, and Gavin Harrison took over the drums. That spring the band made In Absentia at Avatar Studios in New York. It marked a turn to heavier music: Wilson had been listening to extreme metal and had produced Opeth's Blackwater Park. He described its subject as people at the edges of society, and the psychology behind what they do. Songs such as The Sound of Muzak and the ballad Heartattack in a Layby sat among the heavier tracks.

The start was humbling. In July 2002 about thirty people saw them at the Middle East Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a night Wilson found discouraging. Yet the album sold more than 100,000 copies worldwide by April 2004. Prog called it a flop by industry standards that still outsold everything the band had made before, and the start of a new era for progressive music. In 2003 they toured with Yes and then shared a North American bill with Opeth. Deadwing (2005), which Wilson called a ghost story written for a planned film, was Classic Rock's album of the year.

Blank planet

After signing with Roadrunner in 2006, the band spent that autumn playing the whole of the unreleased Fear of a Blank Planet on tour, along with Cheating the Polygraph. The album, inspired by Bret Easton Ellis's novel Lunar Park, came out in April 2007, reached 59 on the Billboard 200 and 31 in the UK, and was again Classic Rock's album of the year. Material left off it appeared that September on the EP Nil Recurring. In October 2008 they filmed two nights at 013 in Tilburg for the concert film Anesthetize. The Incident (2009), a double album built around a 55-minute song cycle, reached 25 on the Billboard 200. After a show at the Royal Albert Hall in October 2010, the band went quiet.

Closure and continuation

For years Wilson said there were no plans, and later that the band no longer existed. In fact a new album had been taking shape in secret in the members' home studios since 2011. In November 2021 Porcupine Tree returned as a three-piece with the single Harridan, and Closure/Continuation (2022) went to two in the UK and to one in Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Wilson played the bass himself after the band lost contact with Edwin. They toured in 2022, including a single British date at Wembley Arena, and played a handful of shows in 2023 that Wilson said were probably their last, while leaving the door open to recording again.

Katatonia, Gorguts and Seven Lions have named them as an influence, and Neil Peart, Alex Lifeson and Mike Portnoy are among the musicians who have praised them. Since 2020 the band's Bandcamp has opened up the live archive, starting with that first show in High Wycombe.

You could argue we were the quintessential cult band.

Steven Wilson, Prog, 2024