IN September of 2010, a stonemason, a plumber and a caterer, all in their late 20s, finally achieved their ambition of forming a band.

Drummer Jordan Hutchinson and bassist William Coombe were complete strangers to their new-found instruments. Frontman and guitarist Dale Barclay was the only one to have played before.

The trio from Glasgow played their first show as The Amazing Snakeheads around 18 months later, and went on to become one of the most notorious and celebrated live acts in the city.

They acquired a saxaphone and the future looked bright... but like all good things, it was never going to last.

On February 18, 2015, the day before they were set to embark on a UK-wide run as part of the NME awards tour, the Snakeheads’ most recent drummer Scott Duff quit the band. Five days later, Barclay took to Facebook with an emotional message announcing the band were no more and ‘never to return’.

The break-up came just 10 months after the release of their debut album, Amphetamine Ballads. The album itself divided critics and punters alike, but the raw, bluesy, punk, rock ’n’ roll sound they captured is about as difficult to pin down as anything heard in the last decade.

Although influences shine through in the album, the Snakeheads were very much their own band.

“For me, rock and roll saved my life and it makes me feel alive,” said Barclay. “When things click into place, whether it’s on stage or recording or writing, then it works and I feel like I have a purpose in life. For me, that’s where I’m at with rock and roll and I’ll die for that feeling.”

Barclay’s frantic on-stage presence was perhaps the band’s calling card. Strutting around the stage with a piercing intensity, crowd members at times were afraid to make eye contact with the brooding Glaswegian. As he screamed “Forget the rest, now I’m your daddy” at the baying audiences, it would take a hardened gig-goer not to shudder. The combination of Barclay’s broad accent over the driving basslines was undeniably powerful. Some journalists even commented that they felt overwhelmed by Barclay’s stage persona, although the band had always said their music was not about violence and aggression.

“People south of the Border maybe mistake the accent and the intensity as scary, when really it’s just passion. But come see us after the show and we’ll be all cuddles and kisses,” said former drummer Jordan Hutchinson. “Every night we take the approach that this is the last gig we’re ever going to play,” added Barclay. “We don’t think about what’s coming after it, because it has to be that way for us. It’s the fight-or-flight instinct.”

Relentless touring throughout Europe led to them selling out venues in Glasgow, London and Edinburgh, supporting Jack White and The Jesus and Mary Chain, as well as headlining the BBC Introducing Stage in front of a fully-packed tent at T in The Park. All things considered, 2015 could have been the breakthrough year for the band, but time was not on their side.

In June 2014 it was announced that two of the founding members –Hutchinson and Coombe – were leaving. After the line up change Barclay said: “It went very badly. It wasn’t just being in a band with people you don’t know. I lost my best friends.”

From the very start the three had been in it together. The cult following they attracted and the expectation that was growing in the music press were results of one thing: the brilliant music they played with an intensity matched by few others. The transformation from three men wanting to do something different in their spare time to one of the most confident bands about was incredible.

“If you’re going to tell a story, man, you’ve actually got to be there when you’re telling it,” said Barclay in 2014.

Right now it looks as if Snakeheads have taken it as far as they can.