Winter Gloves

Winter Gloves began as one guy's way of figuring out how to plug himself into life in the big city. It was a single microphone and minimal equipment gathered into Charles F's downtown Montreal apartment to piece together all the distances he'd covered up until then. The jarring shift of such a transition seemed to peek through every chance it could, a constant inspiration as much as frustration that was drafted in the band's self-released Let Me Drive EP of mainly demo tracks.

Today, Winter Gloves is Charles F (lead singer/songwriter/wurlitzer), Jean-Michel Pigeon (guitar/glockenspiel), Pat Sayers (drums), and Vincent Chalifour (synth). With only a handful of live shows behind them at the beginning of the year, Winter Gloves was already receiving invitations to join bands like Tokyo Police Club on a series of sold-out tour dates. Such well-attended shows helped spread what was already becoming the wildfire of the Winter Gloves' Let Me Drive EP tracks across blogs and music chat sites that lead to top pick coverage at both Canadian Music Week and NXNE this year. The immediate appeal of Winter Gloves' lead off track, "Let Me Drive", earned single of the week status with iTunes that reached over 17,000 downloads.

The band has recently completed their first cross-Canada tour together, which kicked off as things began with a show with Tokyo Police Club and a stop at Virgin Fest before hitting the road with You Say Party! We Say Die!. The immediate response from those shows quickly led to appearances on MTV live, XM radio sessions, International showcase invitations to festivals such as M For Montreal and Great Escape, and "Best of 2008" accolades including "Best New Artist" and "Best Canadian Album" for about a girl from iTunes Canada.