IT seems more like 10 minutes ago rather than 10 years that some scruffy students were handing in a demo to staff at Sheffield's legendary Record Collector store.
That fortuitous delivery into the hands of a former member of city band Comsat Angels and the subsequent showcase gig at Red Tape Studio led to a record label rush for their signatures and a globe-trotting career that has shrugged off the tremors of
fashion and music industry upheaval.
It is arguably their desire not to chase fads that has helped Gomez to a longevity that results in a 10th anniversary version of their debut album Bring It On being released by EMI this Monday – and a tour that begins with a Plug debut on Thursday where they'll perform the album in full.
Bring It On went on to win the Mercury Music Prize – seeing off Massive Attack's Mezzanine, The Verve's Urban Hymns and Pulp's This Is Hardcore – and thrust the former Sheffield and Merseyside students' blend of laid back Americana, indie and sheer English eccentricity further into the international spotlight. They subsequently played Record Collector's birthday bash at The Boardwalk as a thank you.
"Bring It On recalls a time when the group of friends came together to become Gomez after Ian Ball met Ben Ottewell at Sheffield University," says their biography. "It has that creative buzz, the excitement and spirit of adventure that comes when any young band starts out."
Ben (vocals, guitar), Tom Gray (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Paul Blackburn (bass, guitar), Olly Peacock (drums) and Ian (vocals, guitar, harmonica) actually played their first shows together in Leeds in late 1996 and began recording demos back in Olly's dad's garage in Southport.
Those rustic recordings led to the band signing to Hut Records and became the backbone of their debut album, setting the quintet and their mature influences apart in attitude and demeanour from the Britpop groups then currently in vogue.
Mercury judges described it as "an intriguing blend of swamp blues, bar-room rock and eerie power."
Although they have found it tougher to equal the freshness and almost innocent vigour of that initial output Gomez have remained a draw on both sides of the Atlantic with several quality moments.
Maintaining the same line-up throughout, they followed Bring It On with 1999's Liquid Skin, the now-out-of-print rarities and b-sides compilation Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline, and third studio album In Our Gun in 2002.
Although still working with the band at their northern England studio, Ball relocated to Los Angeles (two more have moved to the States since), helping to turn in Split The Difference in 2004 by which time Hut was no more.
Signing directly to but later parting from Virgin, they released live album Out West with ATO Records following with How We Operate, their most recent and successful album mid 2006.
EMI chases up its collection of singles, rarities and unreleased tracks of the same year – Five Men In A Hut: Singles 1998-2004 - with a 10th anniversary collectors' edition of Bring It On, adding a full second disc of material, including two previously unreleased BBC sessions and the b-sides to all three singles taken from the album.
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