Watch the trailer for Since Yesterday: The Untold Story of Scotland’s Girl Bands

We at The Skinny are pretty keen on Since Yesterday: The Untold Story of Scotland’s Girl Bands – so much so that we gave it a Bestie award – and we think you will be too. Written, narrated and co-directed by Carla J. Easton, and co-directed by Blair Young, it’s a vibrant celebration of some of the pioneering Scottish musicians who should be better known but aren’t; it's a paean to the girl groups from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s who should have adorned every Scottish teenagers’ bedroom wall growing up but whose promising careers were curtailed by the sexist, classist and London-centric UK music industry, and whose contributions to the music scene haven’t been well-documented by those eras’ macho music press. 

Easton and Young have assembled a wonderful collection of archive clips and brought together many of these talented musicians to tell their stories first-hand. “Since I first suggested to Blair the idea of a documentary about the history of women who had formed bands in Scotland way back in 2016, we’ve been excited about letting an audience hear all the great music we knew about already, and then all the music we subsequently discovered,” says Easton. “But more than that, it became about letting people hear the experiences of the women who made the music tell their stories, something they had never really gotten the opportunity to do before.”

You’ll hear from artists like The McKinleys, the Edinburgh sisters who opened for The Beatles and were the first girl band to play Wembley, Glasgow’s 80s pop duo Strawberry Switchblade, whose biggest hit gave Easton and Young their film's title, and The Hedrons, the 00s rock band who have a delightful story about pissing off Mick Jagger. There are also wonderful contributions from members of Sophisticated Boom Boom, Lungleg, Sunset Gun, The Ettes and His Latest Flame to name just a few. 

Watch Since Yesterday's trailer below or on YouTube:

October release and tour

Since Yesterday had its world premiere as the closing film for this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival, and will be released in cinemas next month by the excellent Glasgow-based film distributor Cosmic Cat. The cinema tour kicks off on 18 October at Glasgow Film Theatre followed by a gig at Mono that will see 80s Glasgow girl band Sophisticated Boom Boom reform for one night only. Also on the bill will be members of the kickass songwriting collective Hen Hoose, who’ll be performing songs featured in the film, with the help of people like Louise Rutkowski (Sunset Gun/This Mortal Coil) and Jeanette Gallagher (The McKinleys). 

Image: Sophisticated Boom Boom by Peter McArthur

There are more special screenings planned across Scotland, which will feature Q&As with the directors and other special guests. Tickets, dates and more info on the UK cinema release at sinceyesterdayfilm.com

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Since Yesterday: The Untold Story of Scotland’s Girl Bands is released 18 October by Cosmic Cat