On the first day of release, Peepal Tree’s single titled Cauvery climbed up to the no. 1 position n the iTunes Indian Rock charts. Cauvery, pays tribute to the incredible lifeline of south India. Though the mighty Cauvery has a huge impact on the lives of people of 3 states of South India, the sentiment of the song can be attributed to any river, rivulet or tributary anywhere in the world. For at its core, the song celebrates our most vital resource — one that we share with all forms of life on this beautiful planet. Click here to check out the Cauvery video.
Their music can be described as Indian melodies sitting on funk grooves with overtones of electronica, and sung in a variety Indian languages. Peepal Tree, attaches a lot of importance to the message they convey lyrically, apart from their musicality on their recorded material and at live performances. The lyrics range from a variety of social issues such as human disregard for the environment, to more philosophical ideas, nudging us at times to hold up a mirror to ourselves. They are heavily inspired by literary and philosophical giants of Karnataka, namely Rashtrakavi Kuvempu, Dara Bendra and Santa ShishunaLa Sharif.
The supergroup, was born out of the fervent desire of four friends, all musicians, who wanted to incorporate each others’ musical abilities, leanings and knowledge, to write ‘good songs’. They wanted to document their individual musical impressions into a collective expression that would test their ability to write music, represent all the factors that they loved about different kinds of music, while at the same time, keeping them miles away from sounding ‘very esoteric or self-indulgent’. While the band started working on music together in 2011, they found their rhythm to roll only by 2014.
Their first official album titled Chetana was released in October, 2018 and the rose to #1 on the iTunes Rock Charts (India) and #3 on the iTunes overall album charts (India) within hours of the album hitting the online stores, among others.
Chetana has recently made it to the ballots of the 62nd Grammy Awards, in Best Rock Album category.
The Bangalore based band — that doesn’t believe in shackles that come with genre-based descriptions — comprises of Sujay Harthi on vocals, Tony Das on guitars, Praveen Biligiri on bass, Willy Demoz on drums and Siddhart Kamath on keyboards. Their music can be described as Indian melodies sitting on funk grooves with overtones of electronica, and sung in variety Indian languages.
Each musician in the band brings a wealth of experience to this project, having been a part of the Hindi and Kannada movie industries, apart from playing in some of the most successful bands from India, namely The Raghu Dixit Project, Thermal & A Quarter, Moksha, Sandeep Chowta Project and Bhoomi among others.
So far, Peepal Tree previous were titled Roshan-e-Kaafile (with the acclaimed Bollywood composer Sandeep Chowta) and Magizhchi (A tribute to Thailavar Rajnikanth), that met with success and adoration throughout the country.