The House That Biffy Built

Glasgow’s Barrowlands is more than a venue – it’s a proving ground, a hallowed space where Scottish bands don’t just perform but cement their legacies. At the end of October, Biffy Clyro returned to this iconic stage for A Celebration of Beginnings, playing their first three albums – Blackened Sky (2002), The Vertigo of Bliss (2003), and Infinity Land (2004) – in full, as a nod to the raw, unpolished origins of their career. It was a return 20 years in the making; a powerful reflection on their journey since first topping the bill here in 2004, when they were still the underdog heroes of Scotland’s alternative scene. Now, Biffy aren't just part of that history – they’ve become its standard-bearers.

But A Celebration of Beginnings was more than a nostalgic romp through the discography of a band that has evolved beyond its cult origins. It was a nexus of Scottish rock history and fandom, a convergence of generations brought together by the kind of music that Glasgow has long fostered. This is the stage where Biffy was transformed from an experimental trio into something mythic, and where, for three nights, they reclaimed the rawness that set them on their path.

Back to Blackened Beginnings

In 2002, Biffy’s debut album Blackened Sky arrived as a shock to the system. At a time when the UK rock scene was dominated by smoother Britpop acts, Blackened Sky was a visceral declaration of chaos and intensity. Biffy’s sound was loud, unrefined, and darkly thrilling – a contrast to the anthemic sensibilities of the Britpop bands that surrounded them. Even in their nascency, the grunge evocations of highlights like 57 stand in stark contrast to, for example, Oasis’s Stop Crying Your Heart Out, released in the same year.

This first night of A Celebration of Beginnings took fans back to the reckless, unrestrained energy of those early years. It isn’t an album that pulls people together so much as it dares them to confront its intensity, to revel in the dissonance. In the crowd, there's a sense of shared history – a collective recognition of the band’s rougher, angrier origins. The “Biffy, Biffy, Biffy fuckin’ Clyro” chant echoes through the venue before the band take the stage, the outline of the clay figures on Blackened Sky’s album art are shone through a great curtain over the stage, a visual motif that welcomes you each night: the individual depicted on The Vertigo of Bliss’s cover, pre-existing artwork by Milo Manara and Infinity Land’s gasmask-with-mouse-ears, by Chris Fleming, are cast through the curtain on their relevant nights.

The Vertigo of Memory

Biffy’s legacy stretches further than their debut, and The Vertigo of Bliss and Infinity Land – played on the second and third nights, respectively – are albums that saw Biffy Clyro turn from cult favourites into a fully realised artistic force. These records carry a distinctive blend of complexity and vulnerability, with frontman Simon Neil openly admitting that Vertigo... was intentionally built to ‘fuck with people’, as they leaned into newer realms of post-hardcore. They’re as close as Biffy gets to their own mythos, reflecting an experimental ethos that has since become integral to their sound and legacy; angular, dramatic, thundering.

And in Glasgow, their (relative) home ground, these records resonate with fans as more than music; they are formative memories, cornerstones of personality. During The Vertigo of Bliss on Friday, a man in his 50s unforgettably drops to his knees, visibly moved as he screams the lyrics to the ceiling during All the Way Down. It’s a deeply personal response but one that was corollary, evident in the emotional tide of a crowd this committed. Tonight's band tees running the temporal gamut, with bassist James Johnston audibly happy at the sheer volume of their historical merch on display, even joking for the audience to keep it up… he has a new car to buy, after all. These songs were part of those supporters’ DNA as much as Biffy’s own, and as frontman Neil and James launch themselves into the baying crowd following Now the Action Is on Fire, the boundaries between performer and audience all but dissolve. A fan’s exuberant admission that he “grabbed Simon Neil’s tit, then!” is a reminder that this isn’t simply a Friday-night gig; it’s communion, the visceral connection of a band who has never lost its love for its home crowd or its devoted base of supporters.

Image: Biffy Clyro @ Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow, 25 Oct by Euan Robertson

The Barras Nexus

Glasgow’s Barrowlands Ballroom is iconic in is its enduring role as both a venue and a symbol. It’s the place where many Scottish acts have broken out, where local bands have proven they could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with international names, and where fans gather not just to watch music, but to unconsciously participate in the creation of live music history. For Biffy Clyro, this stage is a mirror of their own career – a space that has grown with them yet remains a constant reminder of where they started.

Over the course of these three nights, with the mix of early fans and newer ones, there was a palpable sense that A Celebration of Beginnings was more than just a career retrospective; it was a reckoning with what it means to be both a cult favourite and a mainstream legacy act, a Scottish icon that has achieved international acclaim and success. The dualistic nature of how these setlists are built – an early album played through in its entirety, succeeded by a set list of later hits, B-sides like Hope for an Angel and rarities like Tradition Feed – speak to this.

Even with a clear-cut dichotomy between the two setlist components, moments like Bubbles succeed in sending the Barrowlands into ecstasy. Moments like this, when the ‘jukebox’ element of each night creates rapture in the audience, gives way to the idea that the band’s journey, from underground – their iconoclastic origins and the resultant devotional fanbase – to mainstream festival headliner may have changed the nature of their following. Though the crowd sweeps the age spectrum, there’s no telling who was here 20 years ago carrying crowd surfers forward, and who has joined since the release of 2007’s Puzzle and 2009’s platinum Only Revolutions, and that doesn’t matter. Whether moshing to the jagged riffs of Infinity Land, or swaying to the more radio-friendly Mountains, the Barrowlands and the Biffy create a coalescent, communal crucible of joy.

Encore or Renewal

A Celebration of Beginnings proffered moments that felt suspended in time – places where nostalgia and momentum collide. Twenty years after they first claimed the Barrowlands stage, Biffy Clyro’s performance feels both like a culmination and a reset, shrugging off the weight of their stature to emerge renewed. Whether this was a victory lap in celebration of two decades in defiance of musical trends and traditions, or a ritual to cleanse the slate before stepping into a new phase renewed, we are yet to discover.

Either way, Biffy’s legacy feels validated by the energy created over these three nights. They may have traversed beyond the Barrowlands and Glasgow, but the heart of their music, the sheer emotional force of it, feels at home here.

Image: Biffy Clyro @ Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow, 26 Oct by Euan Robertson

An Infinite Legacy

Looking back on A Celebration of Beginnings, it’s clear that Biffy Clyro’s journey is more than a musical evolution; it’s an evolution of self. They’ve metamorphosed from a band that dared people to listen to them, into one that invites people to live with them in every note, every lyric. For those particularly devoted, screaming these lyrics is evidently a reflex. For many, Biffy isn’t just songs on a playlist; they’re companions through the years... This sense of homogeny in musical and aesthetic irreverence saturates the Barrowlands, as bands like Frightened Rabbit and Aerogramme are played over the system before the band take to the stage – it’s an homage not only to their early contemporaries, but to the musical tastes that these bands and communities nurture.

These early songs aren’t designed to be crowd-pleasers; they’re purges, expressions of something raw and unfiltered that, in many ways, make the later successes possible. Without the dissonance of Infinity Land or the defiant complexity of The Vertigo of Bliss, Biffy’s smoother, stadium-ready anthems would ring hollow. With A Celebration of Beginnings, Biffy Clyro remind us that beginnings are messy, painful, and hard to make sense of in the moment. Maybe that’s what gives them their edge, their lasting power.

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Biffy Clyro celebrated Blackened Sky, The Vertigo of Bliss and Infinity Land across three nights at the Barrowlands, Glasgow, 24-26 Oct

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