Mike Starrs

Mike Starrs (born 10 November 1947, Edinburgh^[1]) is a vocalist of Scottish origin. He left Scotland in the 1970s to work with Rick Wakeman on various projects. Starrs was signed by the record producer Tony Atkins for Marquee Productions and released several singles. He joined Colosseum II in 1975 and featured on their first album, Strange New Flesh in 1976. Starrs' singing style, produced a powerful, distinctive, mid Atlantic delivery, which soared in and around the frenetic guitar work of Gary Moore, the keyboards of Don Airey and the rhythm section of Neil Murray and Jon Hiseman. The end result was a British supergroup in the making, with the potential to take the progressive rock world by storm, as evidenced on that first album.^{[citation needed]}

The album was not a commercial success but the band were already working on the follow-up, when Starrs was sacked, along with the bass guitarist Neil Murray, by the group's then record label, (Bronze Records). Colosseum II went on to produce two further, largely instrumental albums, with a different record label, which also failed to achieve a commercial breakthrough.

Starrs toured Europe and the United States with Colosseum II in 1975-76, and also had a spell with a version of The Animals. Then moving to Hamburg, he subsequently joined Lucifer's Friend, taking over from John Lawton, and featured on two of their albums, Good Time Warrior (1978) and Sneak Me In (1980), after which Lawton took over again.

He was also involved in tours and albums with the German bands, Toneband and Duesenberg. In 2002, he joined up with Lake (band) reformed under Alex Conti, regularly touring and appeared on their 2005 album, The Blast of Silence, taking lead vocals and co-writing one of the tracks.

Starrs' vocal stylings surfaced again on the reissued and expanded Strange New Flesh (2005) which contained unreleased material from the original Colosseum II line up.

References

1. ^ Rockdetector.com

External links

• Oldies.com - Colosseum biography

Persondata
Name	Starrs, Mike
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	10 November 1947
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death