By The Rivers were formed in Leicester in the Spring of 2010 by Nile Barrow (22) and Jordan Birtles (19), who have been friends since birth. The band quickly became a 6 piece inspired by all genres of music. This outfit of talented youngsters write and perform catchy songs in a reggae style, a genre they have an obvious passion for. They write songs concerning both social and political issues with a positive message.

Within their first few months of being together By The Rivers had played the Summer Sundae Weekender Festival in Leicester to a packed MUSICIAN Stage, the press hailing them as one of the highlights of the festival. The band rapidly became popular to the local promoters and word spread across the midlands about this new young band. By the end of 2010 By The Rivers had supported the likes of The Beat, The Buzzcocks, Neville Staple, Toploader, Dawn Kinnard and Fun Lovin’ Criminals (on two of their September 2010 tour at Norwich UEA and Cambridge The Junction).

The start of 2011 saw the band play an acoustic set on the BBC Radio Nottingham show The Beat. This led to the band performing at T in the Park on the BBC Introducing Stage as well as several other festivals around the UK such as Y Not Festival, Leefest and Summer Sundae Weekender. Support slots kept coming as their name kept growing with them supporting Maxi Priest, Dawn Penn, Musical Youth and John Holt. All of this without management the band continued their year with bigger things to come such as being personally asked by guitarist Lynval Golding to support 2 Tone records legends, The Specials on their 15 date UK Arena Tour in October of 2011. Without a second thought the band jumped at this opportunity.

Prior to the tour By The Rivers released their first single through Kompyla Records, a local record label set up by Peri Birtles.

The single, ‘One Word’, came No.21 in the iTunes Reggae Singles charts,. The B side to the single was a remix of the bands song ‘Hard Life, Harsh Times’, remixed by Radio Riddler (Fun Lovin’ Criminals, Fast and Frank), and an acoustic version of original song ‘Take Control’.

The band saw the first few months of 2012 in the studio recording their first album. Since then By The Rivers have been in close contact with PR company Outpost Media with whom they are helping promote the singles and album and have signed an album contract with Kompyla Records.

April of 2012 saw the band take their first steps into Europe supporting New York reggae stars, The Slackers, acoustically on a 7 day trip round Germany, Holland and Denmark. They then took the full band out to Holland for Queens Day and Liberation Day and then ventured to Lille, France supporting reggae star Tarrus Riley. With the festival season fully booked up, singles and an album on their way, the year is set to be their busiest to date.