Slik

Slik formed in the mid-70s from the ashes of a Glasgow (Scotland) group called Salvation which contained Jim McGinlay and his brother Kevin.

By 1972, the brothers had decided to drop the other members of Salvation and form a more viable version of the band, to include James Ure (better known as Midge Ure), drummer Kenny Hyslop, and Billy McIsaac on keyboards.

By April 1974, Kevin McGinlay had decided to leave, and a few months later, in November 1974, the band changed their name to Slik and hooked up with songwriters Bill Martin and Phil Coulter.

The first Slik single was Boogiest Band In Town, a Martin/Coulter composition that was used in a teenage pop movie called Never Too Young To Rock (starring The Glitter Band, The Rubettes and Mud) in which the band had a cameo role. It was their second single, Forever And Ever (again by Martin and Coulter), that shot the group to the top of the British charts in February 1976. Suddenly, Slik were smiling from the pages of every pop magazine in the nation, dressed in their distinctive American baseball shirts.

The band hastily released a follow-up record, Requiem, (another Martin and Coulter song) which did quite well and got to Number 24 in the UK charts in May 1976. It was to be their last taste of success.

The next single, The Kid's A Punk, was not a hit. The onslaught of punk rock in Britain was the kiss of death for clean-cut pop combos like Slik, who were suddenly deemed passé. They continued recording into the following year, producing the optimistically titled single as It's Only A Matter Of Time and their sole album, Slik.

The band struggled on valiantly, but as Slik folded the various members went off to work on different projects. Midge Ure and Kenny Hyslop put out a single of their own called Put You In The Picture under the name PVC2.

Hyslop later played drums for Simple Minds, while Midge Ure went on to play in Visage and then Ultravox (who created one of the first great video hits with Vienna), ultimately gaining worldwide acclaim as the co-creator (alongside Bob Geldof) of the Band Aid single Do They Know It's Christmas? and the Live Aid concert in 1985.