Biography

The Wishing Tree is the inimitable collaboration between singer and lyricist Hannah Stobart and celebrated guitarist Steve Rothery. Highly anticipated by fans all over the world, the band’s new release is named after light, rebirth and the goddess of spring. Its title: Ostara.  
 
Written and recorded in opposite corners of the world, the songs of Ostara were born in two places: Hannah’s log cabin at the foot of a mountain in California and Steve’s home studio in a rural buckinghamshire, England. Two such differing backdrops have produced a family of tracks that boast a unique identity. American grassroots have crept into the band’s otherwise English folk-inspired style. On occasion, the long shadows of the desert fall on England’s dewy grassland and it makes for diverse and spellbinding music. While the sound is indisputably unique to The Wishing Tree, there are flashes of other influences. Crowded House, REM, Fleetwood Mac and even The Eagles seep in from time to time. But, perhaps most notably, this is an album of complementing contrasts. The steel-string swagger of Seventh Sign follows in the wake of a haunting folktale, Hollow Hills. Kingfisher, light and spry, perches alongside Soldier, a heartrending, sometimes even hymnal, song. And if the title track, Ostara, is a kaleidoscopic explosion of colour, Easy rides low and solemn under a heavy grey sky.