Bengaluru is surely turning into of those cities that is helping in shaping up the pathways of numerous musicians to form their own bands. This band called Oxygen On The Rocks which consists of Souvik Chakraborty, Prosenjit Sarkar, Arnab Sengupta, Anish Chakraborty and Dipayan Banik have started their own band in Bengaluru and soon hit it off instantly.
Souvik Chakraborty, was working as a business development earlier before he got into music professionally. He says, “All of us are from the suburbs of kolkata and we called our band Oxygen and we would mostly play Bengali music but somehow, the band broke and we all drifted apart. Later on, I shifted to Bengaluru and was called to play for the durga puja festival here and gradually I got in contact with different members from the city and reformed the band together which we named as Oxygen On The Rocks”.
Initially, the band performed a lot of gigs at pubs in Bengaluru and slowly people started noticing them and now they quite have a large number of facebook followers as well. “We were playing in a pub and a movie production guy noticed us which led us to work in a Kannada movie ‘Mandya Star’ where we played for the songs in the movie. We have also worked for two kannada movies, one of them has been released recently and the other one is under production” says Arnab Sengupta, a 26-year-old bassist.
Their music genre is mostly desi rock music which is a mashup of Bollywood songs but they are also into progressive folk rock music. “As we are from Bengal we stay connected to our roots and we love the Indian music so much that we play all kinds of folk music as well” says Anish, the lead guitarist who also adds saying “I started playing the guitar since the age of 14 and soon it became my forte. I am also trained in Indian classical music and a martial art practitioner as well”.
The band has recently collaborated with a Kannada music director Manoj S for an album ‘Namaste Bengaluru’ which features Raghu Dixit that is going to be released this year. Dipayan who is also trained in Indian classical music says, “I started learning classical music since six years old and my love for music grew and I decided I would take up music as a profession. I met Anish and he introduced me to the band and I have been associated with them since then”. Speaking about the music scene in the city. Prasenjit says, “Bengaluru has a rock and roll music culture and the audience are open about listening to all kinds of music. We have also successfully established our name in the music scene and the audience really appreciates the kind of music we play”.
