LaHost
LaHost was a British progressive rock band of the 1980s.
Career
The band was formed by Sean Godfrey (bass) and Stephen J Bennett (keyboards) of the 1980s Norwich progressive band Airbridge. Godfrey and Bennett were joined by Fudge Smith (drums), Mark Spencer (vocals), David Valentine-Haggart (guitar) and Jaff (percussion).
The band's first gig was at Norwich's 'Whites' pub. London Marquee gigs were played to large audiences. Valentine-Haggart left to be replaced by Mark Trayton (lead guitar) who then left himself to be replaced by Mark Wyatt.
A single "Just Breaking Away / The Big Sleep" was recorded at The Enid's studio in Suffolk. It was engineered by Simon Osbourne who has gone on to work with Sting and Phil Collins. LaHost had a track included on the compilation album Fire In Harmony. Released on Elusive Records, a subsidiary of EMI, Fire in Harmony reached number 49 in the Kerrang! rock album chart.
The band's final gig was at The Rock Garden in London.
Erotic Antiques, a compilation of all the LaHost recordings was released in 1989.
Vocalist Mark Spencer has been in a variety of bands and musical ventures across the years, recording and performing with a wide array of people, including Robert Plant, Prince and Alexander O'Neal. The album, This Way Out, released in November 2007, comprised a selection of tracks covering his musical career. Spencer was the flatmate of Twelfth Night vocalist Andy Sears, and was invited to replace Rick Battersby as keyboardist, during Twelfth Night's reunion dates in November 2007. He later joined Twelfth Night on lead vocal at the January 2012 gig at The Peel in Kingston, where they performed the whole of their Live at the Target and Fact and Fiction albums.
Drummer Fudge Smith went on to join Pendragon (1986 to 2006). He also featured on the album Time Lapse, by Steve Hackett.
Keyboard player Stephen (James) Bennett continued his music career, and is now also a film maker and based in Sweden. He had his own band The Fire Thieves, and worked with Tim Bowness and the band Henry Fool. He also collaborated with Lady Sara Rönneke, David Torn, Hugh Hopper and David Picking. Recently, he has moved into film making, with music videos for Tim Bowness and Peter Chilvers and No-Man, and his first narrative film. Bennett also writes about Logic for Sound on Sound, amongst others, as well as books on the same subject for PC-Publishing.
Guitarist Mark Trayton went on to work briefly at The Lodge recording studio, owned by Robert John Godfrey of The Enid. His career moved into software engineering, both teaching undergraduates and working as a military communications software engineer. He kept his involvement in music as a musician, freelance producer and as a music technology consultant to one of the UK's largest radio advertising companies RadioJingles Ltd., formerly AMCO Media. Since 2006, Trayton has been a full-time independent local radio producer creating radio station idents, radio adverts and jingles working in collaboration with the industry's leading musicians, vocalists, producers, voiceovers and composers.
Bassist Sean Godfrey was formally with AirBridge which evolved into LaHost. Airbridge, previously released the single "Words & Pictures", which was chosen on Desert Island Discs by the author Malcolm Bradbury.