Before they’d even played a single show Departure were booked for by:Larm and Trondheim Calling, with their track “Half/Split” B listed on NRK P3. In January the same year the nascent band were hailed as the year’s most promising prospects at regional news paper Adressa’s annual Ut:Awards.
Even though they played only their fifth and sixth shows ever at by:Larm that year, the band were one of the highlights of the event. Following those stellar shows the band were booked to play the Spellemann awards in March after beating off the competition (who included Honningbarna, Team Me and Anana no less) in a battle of the bands type contest. The jury described the band as “a bunch of charming chaps from Trondheim, who play their well crafted songs with a lighthearted exuberance,” with jury foreman and Spellemann awards event producer Petter Testmann-Koch adding: "We fell head over heels for Departure and the track “Half/Split”. A catchy that fills a huge stage like Oslo Spektrum just perfectly." In April of that year the band’s second single “Gravity” was B-listed on NRK P3.
All this happened in a few hectic months, and only half a year after the band even began. These things can happen pretty quickly sometimes, perhaps too quickly. The band settled though into a touring schedule though and through 2011 and all through the following year the band covered most of the major towns in Norway.
Just before Summer 2012 the band released their third radio single “We Just Got Carried Away” which was playlisted on not only P3, NRJ and all the major regional radio stations. The track was also used by TV2 as the theme tune for this year’s Tour de France coverage and earned the band even more attention. The band made the top ten on iTunes for two weeks and earned them over 120,000 streams on Spotify in only a few months.
In 2012 Departure the band worked intensively on their debut album that will be released by Propeller Recordings.
http://bylarm.no/nor/artists/12495
