Manchester band The Answering Machine have announced their split today, bringing to an end a six year career which resulted in the studio albums ‘Another City, Another Sorry‘ (2009) and ‘Lifeline‘ (2011).
The band broke the news with a hand-written letter on their official website, which reads:
“Over the last week or so we’ve been doing some soul searching. We are very sorry to have to tell you that we have decided to stop making music as The Answering Machine. We’d like to thank every single one of you for coming to our shows, buying our records and supporting our band right up until this point.”
Later, the group added they will not be doing any of their own farewell gigs, as is becoming common practise amongst departing bands, but will instead re-release their final album on a special vinyl edition.
“It obviously hasn’t been an easy decision for us and we don’t want to make things harder/more upsetting for us by doing a ‘farewell tour’ or a ‘last ever gig’,” they continued. “We are happier bowing out on the positive note we started on six years ago.”
“That said we’d still like to do something special as both a mark of respect to you guys for being there with us all the way. So, we will be releasing ‘Lifeline’ (our second album) in a 12inch vinyl very soon as a goodbye and a celebration of all that we’ve achieved.”
The Answering Machine first sparked Live4ever’s attention thanks to the brilliant early singles ‘Oklahoma‘ and later ‘Obviously Cold‘, with our first sit-down interview coming in New York back in November 2009 as the band played their part in that year’s CMJ Music Marathon.
The next summer, with work well under way on their second album, frontman Martin gave us an exclusive insight into the creation of the record, including the making of ‘3 Miles‘ one of the album’s, and the band’s stand-out tracks.
Earlier this year, at SXSW, not long after a blistering but all too short set at Latitude 30, The Answering Machine were kind enough to join us at Live4ever HQ for two superb acoustic tracks, when they proved to be a relaxed, but equally focused group of musicians both on and off tape.
Everyone at Live4ever would like to wish Martin, Pat, Gemma and Ben all the best with whatever the future brings them.