Brendan O'Hare

O'Hare was brought up in Cambuslang, South Lanarkshire and studied at St Aloysius' College, Glasgow. He joined Teenage Fanclub[1] in 1989, in time to play on about half of their debut album, A Catholic Education. He co-wrote with Teenage Fanclub on all albums during his tenure, he split from the group after completing the tour for the Thirteen album, cited as musical differences at the time and went on to join Telstar Ponies, for which he worked on two albums.

He was an early member of Mogwai for approximately a year. He was described by the NME as Teenage Fanclub's "Monkey Without Portfolio", known for his humour and upbeat personality at the time. This prompted the track "With Portfolio" on Mogwai's debut album, Young Team. O'Hare was allegedly kicked out of Mogwai for talking during a performance by Arab Strap leading to a fight with other members of the band. Despite this, there appears to have been no hard feelings between O'Hare and Arab Strap as O'Hare later featured on their double A-side 1998 release, "Here We Go"/"Trippy", contributing to the twelve-minute song, "Trippy".

In addition to his work with Macrocosmica and as Fiend, he worked closely with Dave Barker (formerly of Glass Records, Paperhouse and Creation) who ran the God Bless record label (issuing the sole album by Thurston Moore's 'Foot' project) and was part of the electro-based band, Liminal. Brendan was in charge of bookings and sound engineering at the Glasgow venue The 13th Note before moving to Edinburgh and continuing as engineer at Liquid rooms and Voodoo Lounge. In 2006, he rejoined Teenage Fanclub for shows in London, Glasgow and Barcelona at which the band played their Bandwagonesque album in its entirety.

He is also an honorary member and producer of Glasgow-based pranksters The Plimptons, and plays guitar on their second album Pomp.[2] Between 1996 and 2005, O'Hare played guitar and sang with self-proclaimed 'Intelli-metal' band, Macrocosmica.[3]

O'Hare released a trilogy of experimental ambient albums under the name of Fiend. These albums featured a handful of recordings involving other members of Telstar Ponies, of whom he was still a member when the material was recorded. These are set for digital rerelease in 2017 in collaboration with Dave Barker. New friend tracks were self released in the winter of 2017/2018.

O'Hare is currently playing and writing with Southend-based Indie band Dark Globes and new venture spare sandwich working in collaboration with creative partner Jo Hartle on site-specific multi-media pieces.

In 2019, O'Hare developed and performed a piece entitled Churchtown that was played live drums as internal to the piece for 35 minutes. there are plans to release this in the near future. A follow-up piece is in the pipework for later release and performance.

Visual Arts: O'Hare is a skilled photographer and artist. His recent work was part of a curated show by Ross Sinclair at Queens Park Railway Club “artists who make music, musicians who make art” with fellow creatives. He has completed a solo exhibition of his 2D pieces in 2019. In 2018 he rejoined the Teenage Fanclub as part of the Creation Years Tour playing the full albums and B'sides in their entirety for some select shows in the UK.

Stand up: Natural funny man, Brendan has taken his brand of humour into the wider world and has performed works several times, a mix of docu-soap and abstract and the occasional song or drawing tends to pop up.

He is currently producing and mastering other artistes work and enjoys working as a live sound engineer while developing more new music and stand up performances

He lives with his wife and family in Essex and in 2020 set up his own studio space to continue to have adventures in all things creative.