KINLAY is a 4-piece Rock Funk Dance band from Tokyo, Japan. Andy MacKinlay (Manchester, UK) is the lead vocalist/guitarist, Seiji Fukuda (Setagaya, Tokyo) plays Keyboards & Synth, Yukako Ishii (Kanagawa, Japan) plays Bass with Hiroki Murakami (Saitama, Japan) on drums.

The band first began to take shape in 2004 when Andy MacKinlay began to host weekly Jam sessions around central Tokyo to cater for improvisational musicians disillusioned with the rigid pay-to-play mentality of most Japanese live venues. He pulled in drummer Hiroki Murakami - fellow bandmate from local party band The Conductors and instructor from Hiro Tsunoda's Music School to act as host drummer as often as was available. Through the attendant musicians, Yukako Ishii, then 2nd year university student was brought in on Bass and the trio acted as house band and began playing MacKinlay's original songs as pre-sets to the Jam sessions.

Playing rock covers & funk classics of a weekend at the reasonable-paying locals venues - mainly gaijin pubs around Shibuya & Roppongi, they caught the ear of Hip-Hop & J-Pop producer J☆STILLTON (Doloop Productions) who brought Osaka J-Host band "AQUA" to the top of the Japan Oricon single charts back in 2006. Andy had previously worked with STILLTON on a 3-track indie project from flavor recordings' band LOVADELIC in 2003 featuring MacKinlay as a rapper & backing vocalist. They first met in 2002 in a music shop in Shibuya - STILLTON, looking to deck out his new studio having just returned from a 5-year stint in Vancouver Canada.

Having failed to get the original material signed following numerous self-produced demos+ and disillusioned with the low paying pub cover gigs, MacKinlay took a day job as a consultant in a Tokyo-based Headhunting shop to cover rent and living costs.

Continuing the monthly jam sessions, they pulled in local-scene veteran Fukuda on Keys & Synth and began to experiment with different sounds through Rock, Funk, Reggae & elements of Dance gradually sculpting the KINLAY sound.

After closing a few deals in 2007, Andy put enough cash together to afford the services of STILLTON to produce 8-track Mini-Album "Whose The Clown?"* released July 2008 on 1000 copies pressing.

KINLAY Band still hosts monthly Jam Session for musicians and vocalists to get up with the band at What The Dickens in Ebisu, Tokyo, Japan on the first Tuesday every month. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.