Formed in 1993, they were categorized by the UK music press as a Britpop band and were often drawn comparisons to the Smiths because of their similarities to Morrissey in the demeanour and lyrical style of lead singer Martin Rossiter.
Gene's origins lie in a previous band which was first called The Go Hole, named after a fictional "Beat" club in John Clellon Holmes' novel Go.
A John Peel session fuelled their early success, where they mixed with the music and artistic community in Camberwell mingling with members of The House of Love, My White Bedroom, and Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer.
The day prior to the accident, Clark had offered his resignation in a letter to the rest of the band, due to his dissatisfaction with the way that Walton, and their record label Foundation, were guiding its course.
"The final straw for me," stated Clark, "was calling the Sp!n album In Motion - a play on word-association which was so naff, that it beggared belief."
Clark briefly recorded demos with Andrew "Snake" Newton, who had been the live sound engineer for Sp!n, then gave up music to become a primary school teacher.
Clark felt he was increasingly too old to become a rock star and decided to play and record only in his own bedroom and indeed returned to this after a hiatus of about ten years.
[1] By the time NME ... journalists Keith Cameron and Roy Wilkinson encountered Gene, the band had already gained some live experience and had written several songs.
Cameron and Wilkinson were impressed enough to form an independent record label called Costermonger with the sole purpose of promoting Gene to a wider audience.
[1] After a live appearance at the Reading Festival, the band released their third single "Sleep Well Tonight", just prior to embarking on a large national tour, preceded by several sold-out French dates.
To See The Lights, an LP of rarities, live tracks, radio sessions and acoustic versions of singles, was released in January and reached the number 11 spot in the album chart.
The LP Drawn to The Deep End (1997),[1] takes its name from a "Fighting Fit" B-side, and it revealed a lavish production replete with strings, far more prominent guitar solos from Mason, and a rather warbling vocal affectation from Rossiter.
The album showed some measure of musical development from the band, which was reflected by the inclusion of a keyboardist in their live shows (Grand Drive's Julian Wilson [1996-98, 2004], former Style Council keyboardist Mick Talbot [1999-2001], Marcus Brown [2001], and Angie Pollack [2003-2004]), and the fact that Rossiter was starting to master the art of singing live whilst playing the keyboard for some songs.
Arguably the defining moment of the band's career came in March 1997, when they played with a full orchestra to a sell-out audience at the Royal Albert Hall.
As he told Sorted magazine: "I've never hidden the fact that I've slept on both sides of the bed and people find that very odd that I was quite happy to say 'yeah, I'm bisexual and it doesn't really matter.
On their return from relative wilderness, it appeared that Gene had lost a lot of their prestige during their year out of the limelight and were no longer the golden boys of the indie scene.
First off, the LP, released in February 1999, was a Jam-like political single called "As Good As It Gets", which entered the charts at number 23 to lukewarm reviews.
Rossiter, who had an occasional political spot on BBC Radio Five Live, launched a vitriolic critique of New Labour's first term in office.
One of their shows, at the Los Angeles venue Troubadour, was broadcast over the internet in what was then a record-breaking[citation needed] webcast, screened to at least 60,000 people worldwide.
In January 2014, all four studio albums plus To See the Lights were reissued in double disc deluxe editions containing extra materials (demos, out-takes, radio versions and live).