Moving to London during the 1990s, Richard formed rock band Magnilda with himself on lead vocals and guitar - other members included future television and radio presenter Iain Lee (bass, vocals) and Cardiacs roadie "Captain" John Hook (drums).
Richard also attended school with future musical ally Kavus Torabi ( Cardiacs, The Monsoon Bassoon, Guapo etc.). The brothers were tentative musical collaborators from a fairly young age and had always intended to take their collective work further. Richard Larcombe (vocals, guitars, harmonium, autoharp) and younger brother James Larcombe (piano, harmonium, church organ, hurdy-gurdy, various keyboards) grew up in a musical family in the region of Plymouth, Devon, UK. Stars In Battledress are also notable for Richard Larcombe's literate and allusive post-modern lyrics, which span traditional topics such as love songs and social advancement while also cross-referencing more unusual subjects such as silent film, doppelgangers, historical figures such as Havelock Ellis, the English landscape painters Thomas Gainsborough and John Constable and the work of the Canadian hard-rock band Voivod (sometimes incorporating several of these subjects within the same song). Though the band have displayed a reluctance to be associated directly with progressive rock, the complexity of their music and the use of expansive keyboard textures have sometimes seen them labelled as a progressive rock act: Richard Larcombe's distinctly English tenor delivery has sometimes seen him compared to Richard Sinclair ( Caravan, Hatfield and the North, etc.). Stars In Battledress draw strongly on traditional folk sources (most obviously in their use of folk instrumentation such as harmonium and autoharp, and in the specifically English inflections of Richard Larcombe's singing voice), 1990s American art rock (such as Don Caballero) and the complex "psychedelic mediaeval" music of the related British bands Cardiacs and The Sea Nymphs. 3 Related projects and associations (including Defeat the Young and Lost Crowns).2.4 2010-present: return to work and In Droplet Form.2.3 2003-2009: Secrets And Signals and subsequent hiatus.
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