Biography:

Toma began in 2004, when one lucky 15-year-old named Tom Adams got hold of his first electric guitar. What followed will go down in the annals of history as unremarkable, even clichéd: The young Tom formed a band, wrote some songs that sounded suspiciously like Nirvana and failed completely to do anything really constructive with his time.

Skip ahead to the summer of 2005 and two things happen of reasonable importance:

Firstly, a little known Icelandic group called Sigur Rós release an album named ‘Takk…’ which leads them to play on the BBC2 program ‘Later with Jools Holland’. Though he didn’t realise it at the time, for the watching Tom this was probably one of the most important 7 minutes of his life.

Secondly, after being introduced to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Tom discovered Post Rock.

Having worked out which way round to hold the guitar, and playing an increasing amount of piano Tom set to work on his first album, and Toma was born. Self-releasing ‘From Ruins’ in 2007 on myspace, he gained the attention of Wise Owl Records and in early 2008 re-released a newly mixed and mastered version of ‘From Ruins’. This proved to be popular, and was followed up later that year with ‘Dakota took to wing and history was made’.

Opting for a gap year, Tom travelled to Iceland before heading to the University of York to study music.

In 2009 Toma released ‘As we fall in to static our hearts sing’. Described as a ‘triumphant tale of freedom that reaches epic conclusions in a sea of distortion and melody’, it is available as a free download from Wise Owl, and as a remastered CD from IFF Transponder.