Our bios
Hugh McManners plays guitar and sings, an author by day with time off for good behaviour to play music. Hugh started his musical career as a chorister at St Johns, and spent several lost years playing in various supporting acts for the rock dinosaurs of the early seventies. His band 'Fat Abbott' (sic) famously supported Black Sabbath and The Pretty Things at Exeter University, and another three-piece ‘Medusa’ narrowly avoided being signed by Island Records in those halcyon days. Hugh’s large-scale function ensemble the ‘BashBand’ is enjoying its second decade, whereas Grin-City had to wait until Hugh had bred a drummer.
Bassist Chris Grayson came to music as an art student after a degree in Film and Photography. He now owns and manages the DemonkV Studio complex in Shoreditch, is the other half of the trail-blazing studio-based band ‘Mongo Shakers’ which orbit the outer reaches of funk and rock, and a session guitarist.
Drummer William McManners is a classical violin soloist at the Purcell Music School who plays trombone for the London Schools Symphony Orchestra and Junior Royal Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra, and is also an orchestral percussionist. Much more to the point, he’s also a very promising rock drummer.