Genesis

We're both in bands. Simon's is a function band: weddings, corporate stuff, the odd pub that still books live music, built from nothing into a fully-booked act gigging most weekends. Phil's toured the country in an originals band. Between the two of us we've run the website, answered the enquiries, chased the deposit, sorted the setlist, and done all of that with a guitar still round our neck from the gig the night before.

Every band-website tool we tried was either built for arena acts and record labels, or it was one of those builders that looks like it stopped getting updated in 2015. Nothing was built for a band like ours. So on the 8th of June, Simon opened a terminal and started typing.

Within about ninety minutes we'd scaffolded a Next.js app, realised the name we'd started with (“Backline”) sounded like a cable supplier, renamed the whole thing to Bandhamster, and then ripped out the entire database we'd just built it on because we didn't like how it felt. In one afternoon. Before dinner.

If you're wondering whether that's a sensible way to start a company: no. But it's an honest one, and honest is the whole point of this blog.

That first version could do exactly one thing: give a band a decent-looking website. That was deliberate. A website is the only thing that's actually useful to a single band with nobody else on the platform yet. Everything else (the gig guide, the musician board, all of it) only works once there are real bands on here to fill it in. So websites came first, and the rest had to wait its turn.