Background Bob Stanley and
Pete Wiggs were childhood friends and former
music journalists, who once had a fanzine called
Caff which had developed into a record label by 1989. They originally planned that Saint Etienne would use a variety of different lead singers, and their 1991 debut album,
Foxbase Alpha – influenced by sources such as
club culture, 1960s pop, and
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's
Dazzle Ships – features several vocalists, including
Moira Lambert and Donna Savage. However, after working with
Sarah Cracknell on "
Nothing Can Stop Us", they decided to make her the permanent vocalist, and Cracknell has written or co-written many of the band's songs. Their first two albums,
Foxbase Alpha and
So Tough, feature sounds chiefly associated with
house music, such as standard
TR-909 drum patterns and
Italo house piano riffs mixed with original sounds, notable by the use of found dialogue, sampled from 1960s
British realist cinema. In 1991, the band also released two singles, "
7 Ways to Love" and "He Is Cola", under the name
Cola Boy with different singers (one of them being future radio personality
Janey Lee Grace, who recorded and appeared in the video for the former); their explanation for publishing under a
pen name is that the tracks were "too cheesy for Saint Etienne. We'd have been finished overnight". The band would later produce an updated electro-house version of "7 Ways to Love" for Japanese singer
Nokko for her 1993 album
I Will Catch U (also known as
Call Me Nightlife for the United States, Canada and Europe), in which she added lyrics to the song in both Japanese and English. During the early 1990s the group enjoyed extensive coverage in UK music weekly papers
NME and
Melody Maker and gained a reputation as purveyors of "pure pop" in the period immediately prior to the Brit-Pop explosion.
So Tough reached No. 7 on the
UK Albums Chart. Their most popular singles of this period were "
You're in a Bad Way" and "
Join Our Club" (which reached No. 12 and No. 21 on the
UK Singles Chart).
Tiger Bay (1994) represented a change of direction: the entire album was inspired by
folk music, combined with modern electronica. In 1995, they released their most successful single, "
He's on the Phone", a reworking of
Étienne Daho's "Week-end à Rome" that they had created for a collaborative EP with Daho entitled
Reserection. It reached No. 11 on the UK chart. Stanley has said that with hindsight it was "a bit stupid" that the band "didn't release another single for two and a half years". (The song can be found on
Fairfax High.)
2000s In 2000, they shifted toward a more atmospheric type of
electronica with the release of
Sound of Water.
Finisterre was released in 2002. A follow-up DVD by photographer and film maker
Paul Kelly was released on 4 July 2005. In November 2004, they released their first US compilation of
greatest hits, called
Travel Edition 1990-2005. 13 June 2005 saw the release of the band's album
Tales from Turnpike House. It was preceded by a single for the track "Side Streets". A second single, "
A Good Thing", was released in the United Kingdom on 31 October 2005. Early editions of the album were accompanied by a six-track sampler CD for a planned album of children's songs titled
Up the Wooden Hills. After years floating around various record labels, the band returned to its original label
Heavenly for their 2009 career retrospective,
London Conversations: The Best of Saint Etienne. The album contained two singles, a reworked "
Burnt Out Car" and a new track, the Richard X-produced "
Method of Modern Love". The album also contained as a third "new" track, a remix by Richard X of the previously vinyl-only "This Is Tomorrow".
2010s In May 2012, following the January release of the single "Tonight", the band released their eighth studio album,
Words and Music by Saint Etienne. A companion album of additional songs
More Words and Music by Saint Etienne accompanied the album's US release. Paul Kelly's film
How We Used to Live was released in 2014, co-written by Bob Stanley and
Travis Elborough. The soundtrack was composed by Pete Wiggs, and featured performances from both Sarah Cracknell and Debsey Wykes. To promote the film, Saint Etienne undertook a short tour, providing a live soundtrack to screenings of the film. Saint Etienne's ninth studio album,
Home Counties, was released on 2 June 2017.
2020s and split Their tenth album, ''
I've Been Trying to Tell You, was released on 10 September 2021. According to Pete Wiggs, the album was a lockdown project for the trio during the COVID-19 pandemic, prior to which they were working on a different set of tracks. In September 2021, he confirmed the group planned to revisit the material for a possible 2022 release. Their eleventh album, The Night'', was released on 13 December 2024. Whilst promoting
The Night, the group confirmed that a further album would soon follow, and in May 2025,
International was announced for release in September, with "Glad" as the first single. The press release and subsequent interviews for the album also revealed that this would be the final Saint Etienne album following Bob Stanley's suggestion to Cracknell and Wiggs that they conclude their recording career on a positive note.
Collaborations 1993's non-album single "
Who Do You Think You Are" is a cover of a song by Candlewick Green. Saint Etienne recorded it as a duet with Debsey Wykes, former singer of
Dolly Mixture. The song was also remixed by
Aphex Twin. In 1993, the band collaborated with
Kylie Minogue for two songs: a cover of "Nothing Can Stop Us" (intended at the time to be her first single release for her new label) and "When Are You Coming Home" (unreleased). The band also wrote and produced the 1993 single "
One Goodbye in Ten" for
Shara Nelson. The same year, the
Xmas 93 EP featured
Tim Burgess from
The Charlatans on the lead track "
I Was Born on Christmas Day". In 1995, the band co-recorded the
Reserection EP with French pop singer
Étienne Daho; later, they also worked on his album
Eden and single "Le Premier Jour". For the band's first greatest hits compilation,
Too Young to Die – The Singles (1995),
Eurodance producer
Steve Rodway reworked the track "Accident" from the
Reserection EP, producing the renamed single "
He's on the Phone." The single, co-credited to Daho, gained the singer additional exposure to English-speaking audiences. In 2000, the band crossed genres by working with trance producer and DJ
Paul van Dyk, resulting in the single "
Tell Me Why (The Riddle)", with vocals by Cracknell. The 2005 album
Tales from Turnpike House features
David Essex as a guest vocalist. Several tracks on the album were co-written and co-produced by Brian Higgins' songwriting production team,
Xenomania. Sarah Cracknell has collaborated with
Marc Almond on his single "I Close My Eyes and Count to Ten" for his album
Stardom Road. In addition to the
Richard X collaboration on the "This is Tomorrow"/"
Method of Modern Love" single, 2009 also saw the limited release of
Foxbase Beta, the producer's reworking of the band's debut album
Foxbase Alpha.
Home Counties, released in June 2017, features collaborations with London band
Kero Kero Bonito.
Film and television work The 1998 album
The Misadventures of Saint Etienne is the soundtrack to the
independent film The Misadventures of Margaret, starring
Parker Posey. After the soundtrack was completed, the film's producers opted to replace it with a more "conventional" soundtrack, but a number of tracks can still be heard in the background of the film's final version, and Saint Etienne received top "original music" credit on the film. The band also recorded a duet by Cracknell and Posey titled "Secret Love" for the soundtrack, but due to legal entanglements it has never been released. The band recorded the theme song and incidental music for
Maryoku Yummy, a 2010 children's television show that aired on
Tiny Pop and
The Hub. The band has also been involved directly in film production, notably collaborating with filmmaker
Paul Kelly on several short films documenting the landscape and history of London. The first of these was
Finisterre (2002), set to songs from
the album of the same name, inspired by the 1967 film
The London Nobody Knows and
Patrick Keiller's 1994 film
London. A series of three-minute films entitled "Today's Special" (2004) documented "London's disappearing cafés",
Songs in other films and television "
Like a Motorway" appears on the soundtrack of the 1994 film
Speed, although the single is never heard in the actual film itself. Their song "
Hobart Paving", with slightly altered lyrics (replacing the title lyric with the line "Hold on princess...") and an altered title ("Catch Me"), was covered for the soundtrack of the 1997 film
Bandits, and was an integral part of the soundtrack album (one of two promotional videos released for the soundtrack was for the song), which became the best-selling soundtrack album to a European film soon after release. Actor/musician
Jasmin Tabatabai still performs that version in concert. "We're in the City" from the
Places to Visit EP is featured in Jamie Babbit's 1999 film ''
But I'm a Cheerleader. Also in 1999, "Wood Cabin" from the Good Humor album appeared in "I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano", the first season finale of The Sopranos'', playing in the background during Jimmy Altieri's assassination. "A Good Thing", co-written by Cracknell, Mark Waterfield and Lawrence Oakley, is featured in
Pedro Almodóvar's 2006 film
Volver and in the ''
Grey's Anatomy''
season 2 episode "Tell Me Sweet Little Lies". ==Awards and nominations==