Despite forgetting a song on stage when he was a little boy and leaving music behind to study chemistry, Ceredigion-born Rhodri Daniel couldn’t resist the lure of music for long.

Whilst working at an engineering firm in Aberystwyth, he got together with some like-minded musicians and the band Estrons was born.

And it was the right move for Rhodri, as the band is enjoying great success, supporting Garbage on their tour and releasing their debut album.

Looking back on where his love of music came from, Rhodri told the Cambrian News: “Music is an integral part of my heritage, some of my earliest memories are attending Eisteddfodau across Ceredigion and Wales with my big sister singing her heart out on stage.

“It left quite a mark on me, and I soon followed in her footsteps, so much so that when I was no older than six, my sister had to drop out of a performance due to a sore throat, so I marched on stage at Lampeter Eisteddfod exclaiming that I would do it instead as I knew the song (having heard it hundreds of times at home).

“However when I got on stage and saw the hundreds of people staring at me, my memory of the song soon disappeared, and I cried out loud that I had forgotten it!

“I still remember the laughing, or maybe it’s because the people of Lampeter still remind me of it to this day.”

The experience didn’t put Rhodri off music, as he explained: “10 years later me and a few of my friends formed a rock band and performed for the first time on that same stage at an after school disco.

“It was undoubtedly awful, the headmaster Mr Dylan Wyn, had to drive back to school to throw us off stage due to the noise!

“We went on to tour Wales in that band (Java) and loved every minute, formed life long friendships with people across the country and sowed the seeds of our song writing potential.

He went on: “I put down my guitar after school and went off to study chemistry and worked in industry across the UK for several years, however my appetite for music was so strong and all consuming that I eventually picked up my guitar again and started to write.

“The first songs were absolutely terrible, but you know, you have to write awful music to write good music...

“I was living in Aberystwyth at the time working in an engineering firm, and I banded together a group of like-minded musicians to start gigging under a new band name Estrons.

“Estrons, meaning ‘aliens’ or ‘outsiders’ in the Welsh language, is pluralised in the English form (the correct wording would be ‘Estroniaid’), however I wanted a band name that would reflect the musicians, being of mixed Welsh and English heritage and growing up perhaps ostracised from either or both communities and not having a mixed and confused sense of national identity, and what nationality even means or matters in the age of globalisation.

“The band eventually moved to Cardiff and we released our first single Ceredigion to national radio.

“The song was about our love for our homeland, the feeling of loss having moved away but the fear of moving back and being drowned if we’d stayed, and the internal struggle one must fight to resolve those feelings.”

The band has since toured the UK and performed across Europe and the USA, and released their debut album, You Say I’m Too Much, I Say You’re Not Enough, on 5 October on Gofod records.

They have also embarked on their first headline European tour and a massive UK headline tour.

As well as guitarist Rhodri, the band is made up of singer Tali Kallstrom and bassist and long-running producer Steffan Pringle.

The group will headline their own tour throughout November and early December in support of the album. They can be seen at The Parrot in Carmarthen on Friday, 23 November.