IT IS a band formed on a whim, but they are now looking to take 2017 by storm.

Indie rock band Grafted came together when all four of its founding members were studying at Queen Mary’s College.

Starting out as a covers band, lead guitarist Luke Whorriskey told The Gazette how the band was born out of the need to want to play music again.

“I got an e-mail from one of the business students and they were putting something on at the central studio for their projects and asked if I could get something to gether,” Luke said.

“So I thought I haven’t played in a band for ages so just wanted to get some people together I asked Alex (drums) who I had known from school and Daisy (guitar/vocals) and our then bass player Zoe if they wanted to play it and they were up for it and just done a load of covers and it has just grown from there.”

The quartet continued to play as a covers band, slowly introducing their own material until they came up with the sound they play today. With influences ranging from folk to heavy metal, Luke said the group of friends met in the middle when they decided to settle on a sound, but everything has evolved naturally.

He added: “When we began writing everything just seemed to flow quite naturally, I mean we are all into indie bands and we kind of started writing that sort of music before we listened to bands like the Arctic Monkeys.

“We have tried to go with the more gritty approach rather than the clean indie sound which you get with many bands.

“There aren’t that many bands, especially in the Basingstoke area, who are doing the indie rock thing, so when you have things like Basingstoke live and you are one of the only indie bands playing it then it does open you up to a wider audience who may not have heard of us.”

With a bit of a line-up change with the addition of new bassist Alex Wells, the indie rockers are currently in the process of writing an EP and are looking to be a lot busier in 2017.

Luke added: “Hopefully we will have a lot planned for 2017. We are currently recording an EP and as we haven’t released any music for a long time it will be good to put something out for people to listen to.

“We are doing a lot of re-branding, but we are not in a rush and we want to do everything to a standard we are happy with and then put it out into the world.”

Keep up to date with th Grafted at facebook.com/graftedband.