Born and raised in Atherton, a small cotton milling town in Lancashire/Greater Manchester, Sam Smith has been performing and releasing music under his birth name since 2005. Following the dismantling of acclaimed and long established punk outfit Sam Smith & Company in 2013, Smith formed his new band The Parish Church Fire with intentions of pickling up where SSAC left off. However, it wasn't until 2019 that it truly came to the furore following a high profile headline slot on the second stage at Strummercamp festival in the same year. For many years, Smith was deterred from using his birth name due to the global rise of a Universal Music Group recording artist of the same name. Whilst releasing music under various pseudonyms in the mean time, Smith signed with German Shepherd Records in 2015, initially releasing music as Franco Bandini before again reverting to his birth-name releasing Bad Water, Under the Waves off Kanagawa and finally Live in Manchester, 8/12/2018. This lead to the reformation of The Parish Church Fire which will remain his sole focus from 2019 and beyond