The Glasgow music scene is heralded as a vibrant and diverse celebration of talented artists from different walks of life.
The city on Scotland's west coast, which boasts the world's oldest surviving music hall in the Britannia Panopticon Music Hall having been opened in 1857, has long been at the heart of Scotland's music scene and holds a great reputation in the wider United Kingdom.
Jumping forward to the present day, over 150 years from the opening of the Britannia Panopticon Music Hall, Glasgow is now a UNESCO City of Music having picked up that award in 2008 with nearly 200 live music venues calling the city home.
It was shortly after the end of World War II that Glasgow began to emerge as a home for music, originally through folk and jazz.
As the British Invasion ensued Glasgow became a home to the growing mod scene and was consistently a home to underground local artists, but it wasn't until the late 1970's that Glasgow began to produce international acts, with Simple Minds becoming the face of the Glasgow scene for a worldwide audience.
The introduction of new wave and indie music was integral to Glasgow's blossoming as a music scene, as this coupled with the expanding Glasgow School of Art meant that Glasgow became a great place for creativity to run wild, in turn producing many world-class bands such as The Jesus & Mary Chain, Orange Juice, Primal Scream, Del Amitri, Teenage Fanclub, The Pastels and Texas just to name a few.
Alongside the artists which became known across the globe, the venues of Glasgow quickly became iconic in their own right.
Perhaps none are more iconic than King Tuts Wah Wah Hut on St. Vincent Street, which despite its relatively small 300 person capacity has hosted many acts which have gone on to reach the very top, giving the venue a reputation for being a breeding ground for future stars, with those acts including Oasis, Blur, Kasabian, Coldplay, Radiohead, Arctic Monkeys, The Libertines, Calvin Harris and Florence and The Machine to name but a few.
At the other end of the scale, Glasgow is home now to the OVO Hydro which continues to host the biggest stars in music since its opening in 2013. In 2019 the venue was the 2nd busiest venue in the world, coming behind only the iconic Madison Square Garden in New York City. Not bad company to keep.
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