Singapore Sling was formed in spring 2000 in Reykjavík, Iceland, by singer, songwriter and guitarist Henrik Björnsson, aided by his friend, guitarist Einar Þór Kristjánsson. Björnsson had some
8-track demos and wanted to create a band. One of these demos was "Overdrive", which surfaced online on the
Iceland Airwaves 2001 official website, and later became "Overdriver", the opening track on their first studio album. Despite Björnsson's job as a bartender, the band's name did not come from the
Singapore Sling cocktail but from a 1990
art film,
Singapore Sling, by the Greek director
Nikos Nikolaidis. In a June 2003 interview with VRT Radio 1, Björnsson said, We had a first gig. It was booked and we didn't have a name and I had been looking for a film called
Singapore Sling for a long time. I couldn't find it anywhere. It sounded cool, so that became the name of the band. It's some kind of dark, perverse Greek film from 1990. I haven't found it yet, so if you know someone who has it, please let me know. I hope it's good. A dark perverse noir film and a guy who has sex with a corpse. And he's called Singapore Sling. Although it was distributed in
Denmark by the Reykjavik- and
Copenhagen-based independent label
12 Tónar,
Taste the Blood of Singapore Sling was not licensed for release in the United States. That same year, Singapore Sling appeared in
Screaming Masterpiece, a
documentary film about the Icelandic music scene. Aðalsteinsson left to form The Third Sound, who later participated in Björnsson's now-defunct Vebeth collective of Icelandic music artists. In 2006, the German label Play Loud! Music released a 2-disc compilation album,
Silver Monk Time, as a tribute to
The Monks. Singapore Sling provided a cover version of the track "I Hate You", recorded specially for the project and mastered at Faust Studio by Hans-Joachim Irmler from the band
Faust. In 2007, the German label 8mm Muzik issued
The Curse, the Life, the Blood, a
best-of compilation dedicated to the European market, including four tracks from each of the two first albums and two tracks from the third album. 8mm Muzik managed a European record release tour to promote the album, with venues located in
Germany,
France,
Benelux, Denmark,
Austria,
Italy and
Czech Republic. Beginning in 2008, Björnsson participated in the band
Dead Skeletons. He also formed side project The Go-Go Darkness as a duo with his wife, Elsa María Blöndal, and issued the
Dark Heart album in 2009. Singapore Sling's fourth album,
Perversity, Desperation and Death, was released in 2009 by 8mm Muzik. This was followed by the band's fifth,
Singapore Sling Must Be Destroyed, in October 2010, issued by Outlier Records. With "Never Forever" (2011), Singapore Sling began a collaboration with London-based label Fuzz Club Records. The live lineup changed to include bass player Hallberg Daði Hallbergsson. In 2012, the band played Austin Psych Fest (now renamed
Levitation), and by the end of the year, they toured Europe as headliners for Fuzz Club's Reverb Conspiracy Tour, hitting Europe's main capital cities with the Lucid Dream (from the UK) and Wall of Death (from France). Another tour followed in September–October 2013, including an appearance at the second edition of the Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia. In February–March 2015, Björnsson worked in his home recording studio on unfinished material from 2012. With the addition of brand-new compositions, it was released as two albums:
The Tower of Foronicity (2014) and
Psych Fuck (November 2015). The latter album featured opener "Dive In", a cover of a song by Icelandic band Quarashi. The band's ninth studio album,
Kill Kill Kill (Songs About Nothing), was released on February 2, 2017, again on Fuzz Club. == In media ==