The Pigeon Detectives are an English band from Rothwell, West Yorkshire, who formed in 2002. They have been championed by such well known DJs as Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley, and performed at the Reading and Leeds Festivals in 2006, where they were tagged "the band most likely to leap to the main stage in 2007" in an NME review.

They supported Dirty Pretty Things whilst they toured in spring 2006. In early November 2006 they supported fellow Leeds band Kaiser Chiefs, who are known to be fans of the band, on a number of occasions around Europe. On 8 July 2007, they played on the Radio 1 NME Stage in front of thousands at T in the Park. The performance was televised and shown later that day on BBC3. They went on to perform their biggest show ever at Oxegen 2008 which was beamed around Europe on MTV.

Up to the end of 2008 the band had released 2 albums, selling over 500,000 copies together in the UK.

Wait For Me

The Pigeon Detectives are signed to the Independent label Dance To The Radio with whom their debut album, Wait for Me, was released on CD, 12" heavyweight vinyl and digital download on 28 May 2007. The album, recorded in autumn 2006, has been produced by Will Jackson and was recorded in the band's home town of Leeds.

An early version of the album leaked to underground music download sites across the internet on 11 April 2007. The album charted straight in at Number 3 on the UK Top 40 achieving Gold status soon after release.

On 14 August 2007 the band appeared on the Jo Whiley show and performed in the Live Lounge, doing their current single "Take Her Back" and a cover of Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend".

During September 2007, the band played at JerseyLive. The festival (held in Jersey, one of the Channel Islands) was a weekend event also including The Fratellis and Kasabian in the line up. The band also played Oxegen, an Irish festival in county Kildare, in July 2007 and performed again in July 2008.

In September 2007 it was announced that The Pigeon Detectives had been nominated for Best New Act at the Q Awards, but they lost out to The Enemy,

The band supported Kaiser Chiefs on three of their November/December UK tour dates, these include 1 December 2007 at the Manchester Evening News Arena and 15 December 2007 at Earls Court in London.

A cover of the Huey Lewis and the News track "The Power of Love" appears on the Radio 1 Established 1967 compilation CD.

Speaking about the name drummer Jimmi Naylor said: "I never liked the name at first. But it's stuck - and it's probably got us more attention having a silly name.

"It came from an Australian guy who we met at the Leeds Festival. We were just discussing band names and he came up with The Pigeon Detectives. It became an in-joke for the rest of the festival.

"We thought nothing of it, but when it came to our first gig in Leeds the promoter was saying, 'What's your name?' We were like 'Oh, um The Pigeon Detectives.' "

When asked by BBC Sound about the name Jimmi says "Dave breeds pigeons, and there's a pigeon that lives in a shed, thats his special pigeon, and this pigeon actually writes all the songs". Another story about the band name came around when Matt Bowman and Ryan were being interviewed for Later with Jools Holland, and Matt said that he and Ryan have a tradition of having christmas dinner together and when they pulled the cracker they found the name in there. When asked about the Australian man at Leeds Festival Ryan replied with "That is a weird rumour that's going around. We don't know where that's come from", Matt then butts in with "There's also a rumour that there's a giant pigeon at the bottom of our garden that writes all the lyrics, But that's equally as untrue".

The band have appeared on the football based entertainment show Soccer AM on three occasions. On the 2007 Christmas Day special, they became the first band to play in the Soccer AM studio, playing singles "I Found Out" and "I'm Not Sorry". During the same episode, lead singer Matt Bowman announced that he had suffered a fractured heel bone, after jumping off a set of speakers whilst performing at Manchester Academy.

Emergency

In January 2008, they headed into Monnow Valley Studios in Monmouth, Wales with producer Stephen Street to record their second album, titled Emergency. The album was released on 26 May 2008 going in at number 5 in the UK album charts. The lead single This Is An Emergency peaked at number 14, their 2nd highest charting single.

In June 2008, The Pigeon Detectives had their Brighton Dome gig filmed and later broadcast on Channelbee.

After a busy summer of festival gigs, including a huge show at Glastonbury, the band released the 2nd single of Emergency, Everybody Wants Me. The single reached 51 in the UK charts.

After finishing the Emergency tour at the back end of 2008 the band took a little time out. They have been demoing songs over the course of the year in between festival slots, the last of which is headlining the Underage Festival in London.

• 2007: Wait for Me
• 2008: Emergency

• Official site
• Dance to the Radio record label
• The Pigeon Detectives - Leeds Music Scene
• The band at MySpace
• www.gigapics.co.uk / Monmouth Music Festival 2009
• The band at Drowned in Sound