British Theatre are an English electronic rock band from Manchester, formed in 2011 by former Oceansize members and current Biffy Clyro touring musicians, Mike Vennart and Richard "Gambler" Ingram.
Vennart and Gambler had been playing together in Oceansize for the full thirteen years of the band's existence.
Often in Oceansize there were disagreements about direction: there was one camp that wanted the band to be strictly ‘heavy’ and another that was up for experimenting.
"[2] Gambler drew on his experiences of electronic music, initially from having heard Jean-Michel Jarre's Oxygène album when very young, followed by his own experiments with keyboards and recording, as well as his past work as Oceansize's occasional keyboard player (a role he'd taken over following the departure of original bassist/electronics player Jon Ellis in 2006).
Contemporary electronic dance music only began to make an impression on the project circa 2011,[2] with Gambler noting "towards the end of Oceansize’s career my tastes had veered towards more left-field electronic music and sound design.
I was reading a book about Pavement at the time and how in their early days they'd put out 7" records themselves, which inspired us to kick things into gear.
[4] Having judged that they "felt OK"[2] about the initial results, British Theatre released a second EP, Dyed in the Wool Ghost, on 20 August 2012 as a digital download and on 12-inch vinyl.
When the duo picked up on the project again a few years later, there were changes and readjustments prior to the release of the full-length debut album, Mastery in 2016.
"[2] Never intended as a touring band, British Theatre only played a single concert (at the Arctangent Festival in Compton Martin UK, on 22 August 2015, at which they were described by Prog magazine as "ambitious, reaching towards the romantically charged, lush experimentalism of Radiohead.