Unveiling St. Tropez ... Or Maybe Not?

Now here's a thing. Little Indie, as many will be aware as we have stated it before, are opposed to 'mystery' bands who pop up refusing to give even their names, never mind any other information, but just want to shove a track at you. On most occasions we refuse to give publicity to such artists as it seems to us a rather pointless exercise (all the cloak and dagger stuff), given that they will be outed eventually; and it also strikes as a tad pretentious.

So, we then - as probably other bloggers did too - get contacted by one of such 'anonymous' outfits at the end of last November going by the name St. Tropez. Despite failing to get little more out of them, bar the exclusive (at that time) that they were headed to the UK in the new year, we fell in love with 'I Don't Wanna Fall In Love', gave them the honour of a Track Of The Day (You can read the piece in full here), and facilitated radio airplay for them.

Since then we have had intermittent contact, but we were still none the wiser about who they were. Even having now put out a full EP - which you can stream here - and with the services of a PR, little more was forthcoming, leaving bloggers scratching their heads and needing to pad out their copy with a few dozen lines on something else.



But, as we have said, it is impossible to keep your identity hidden for long, and for St.Tropez it seems their cover is now blown. We were alerted via a Dutch contact that word was fast spreading that the four members of St. Tropez bore a striking resemblance in the image that can be seen at the top of this post, to another band. And not just any old band, but one of Holland's most successful and well known pop-rock outfits of the last years: Go Back To The Zoo. A band who were signed to Universal Music, released two Dutch Top Ten albums, 'Benny Blisto' in 2010, and 'Shake A Wave' two years later, and have played on the main stage at festivals like Pinkpop. Not easy then to go unrecognised by the eagle-eyed!

When GBTTZ/StT guitarist Teun Hieltjes (brother of vocalist Cas Hieltjes; with Lars Kroon on bass, and drummer Bram Kniest) was confronted by a Dutch journalist as to whether they were indeed now St. Tropez, he would neither confirm or deny the rumour: "I have not much to say about that. I'm not saying that we are, or that we are not. Listen to good music, I hope you like it."

Need further proof? Go Back To The Zoo's tour manager Torben Eils was one of the first followers of St Tropez's Soundcloud account. And take a listen to what Cas Hieltjes responds with in the video below, which is from as long ago as 2013, when as GBTTZ he cheekily bigs up his own new band, St. Tropez! Though you may need to take our word for that unless you understand Dutch.

Aside from all that, however, we are still definitely loving St. Tropez - whoever they may be. And what's more, they hit London on February 10 to play the Old Blue Last, followed by Brighton’s Green Door Store the night after.