Lili

I was mentally reviewing what I’ve written so far here in my blog and I realize that I didn’t even mention the band! Which is a big part of my life, and you might have stumbled upon me because of them (which is great, that you for liking our music!). Well for those who don’t know, I play keyboard and sing back-up vocals for The Ransom Collective, a 6-piece indie folk/pop band here in the Philippines.

We formed informally around late 2013 to play some songs Kian wrote on his own and posted on soundcloud. While we were practicing, I discovered online a competition organized by Wanderland (an international music fest in the PH) giving local bands a chance to perform at their annual event. We decided to give it a shot, submitted a live video of us playing Something Better, got in, wrote Fools together, and performed that as our winning song at the competition! It was kind of meteoric given that we were such a young band and the competition was literally our fifth gig. But we pulled it off because we were practicing so frequently prior to the competition.

After that, we had about four more months to write (or arrange and finalize) original songs before the Wanderland Music Festival in May, and out came Hither, Run, and Images, songs that compose our first self-entitled EP which we released later that year (November 2014).

So that’s essentially how we started. There are so many more things that happened after, but I only meant to give a brief summary and introduction here (and honestly I have to start working), so I’ll end things for now, but I promise to share more! I actually have a lot of life updates I’d also like to write about, but I’m still not in the clear with all the moving parts and uncertainty. All I can say is that I’m really excited for 2020 and I’m hopeful for things to come!

Oh, if you want to know more about the band, you can find us on social media and check out our website theransomcollective.com