For once, a multi-venue festival that didn’t feel like an endurance sport. Cowgate Block Party did the radical, almost suspiciously sensible thing of spacing its acts out just enough that you could actually catch at least part of a set without sprinting up stairwells like a panicked roadie or choosing between bands the way you choose which limb you’re prepared to lose. It was refreshing — humane, even — like someone involved had experienced first hand the pain of having to flip a coin to decide who to see…

Set across Sneaky Pete’s, Legends and the Bongo Club, the night unfolded like a well-timed pub crawl curated by someone locked in to what is fresh and new and a Spotify premium account. Three venues, too many bands, not enough time, and a creeping sense that if places like Sneaky Pete’s go under, live music in Edinburgh will be replaced entirely by silent discos and men explaining crypto.

This was grassroots music clinging to the walls like Blu Tack — ugly, essential, and holding the whole thing together.

Filmstar

Opening the day at 3:15pm is a thankless task, but Filmstar leaned into it with the air of a band who sound like early Oasis if Liam had gone to therapy and Noel had stayed home. Britpop DNA, slightly scuffed round the edges, songs that feel like they were written staring at a bus window wondering where it all went mildly wrong. Comfort music, like a battered leather jacket you’ll never throw away.

Alex Apolline

Alex Apolline has the haunted gentleness of Phoebe Bridgers wandering through Portobello at dusk, mixed with the dreamy detachment of Slowdive-era shoegaze. Dreamy chat, maximum atmosphere. Her songs drift rather than land — like “Muscle Memory” with its still-don’t-feel-like-home melancholy. Hopeless romantics only. Anyone who can get a room full of Edinburgh punters to sing a long so early in the afternoon has our seal of approval.

Bathing Suits

Bathing Suits opening salvo was “We’ve just ate and we’ve ate too much,” which instantly placed them somewhere between slacker irony and techno-thrash before the room packed out. Loose-limbed acid haus so hot it would melt your face off. This is what chaotic noise sounds like when orchestrated in a beautiful manner. As they jump across feedback monitors, dance manically and remove clothing layer by layer song by song their set is a glorious riot of spectacle and ear bleeding distortion- think the Klaxons being strangled by Fcukers– and it was glorious. Our favourite track was “Lousy Havoc”.

Gurry Wurry

Gurry Wurry feels like Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci’s anxious cousin who listens to Neon Neon and drinks oat milk — which makes sense, given Andy Monaghan of Frightened Rabbits is currently producing the next album. Steeped in 70’s twee aesthetics, well manicured moustaches and ladles of Ned Flanders style twee audience interactions – makes Gurry Wurry instantly disarming. Songs like “Like a Landlord” turn everyday observations into small emotional gut punches, satire rubbing up against the mundanity of life. “Hairline” brushes troubles away like a panic attack disguised as a pop song. Intelligent, funny, quietly devastating.

No Bad News In Heaven

Falkirk’s own No Bad News in Heaven — a lean, wired three-piece girl-powered trio — took to the stage with the sort of bracing intensity that makes you feel like you’ve accidentally wandered into the best kind of chaos. On tracks like “After Everything”, they shepherded a cascade of skeletal rhythms and haunted, pinprick melodies, all underscored by restless guitar lines that seemed to crackle against the night air. There was something both urgent and elegiac in their sound, a little like early Sleater-Kinney meeting a storm-tossed dream, and by the time they were done the crowd felt like it had been both shaken and baptized all at once.

Quiet Years

A surprise act with vocals delivered in a proudly well-enunciated Scottish dialect — imagine Arab Strap if they’d discovered optimism, briefly, then immediately distrusted it. Their songs feel like letters you never sent, especially “Imagined Truths” with honeyed vocals and dreamy synth melodies the chorus is painfully catchy and easily lodges into one’s cranium. There’s something Frightened Rabbit-adjacent here too: vulnerability without self-pity, sadness with good posture, manic dance moves and something uplifting at the heart of it all. Good to see some millennials give Gen Z a run for their money. Definately ones worth keeping an eye on…

Ellis.D

Ellis.D, the Brighton-based solo force has arrived with full band backing, they move through tracks with a restless, electric energy that feels like it’s just about to spill over. On “Humdrum” and “Drifting”, jagged synth lines and taut rhythms collide with vocals that hover between defiance and vulnerability, each note pulling you in different directions. There’s an almost cinematic quality to his presence, made stranger by the fact he bears an uncanny resemblance to the singer from The Kooks — charming on first glance, but with a bite that’s entirely his own. It’s art-punk, it’s restless, and it’s unmistakably Brighton.

Dream Nails

Dream Nails didn’t play — they attacked. Sonically, think Bikini Kill colliding with early Le Tigre, with the volume and venom of Amyl and the Sniffers. This wasn’t a gig, it was a rally. Queer, confrontational, joyous fury. “This is for queer people and allies” they landed like a punch wrapped in glitter. The kind of set that makes you want to slay the patriarchy and overthrow capitalism simultaneously. Special mention goes out to their track “Vagina Police” which was gloriously delicious played live.

Girl Group

Girl Group are what happens if the Spice Girls were raised on post-Y2K feminism, riot grrrl theory, and good trainers. Four-part harmonies tight enough to bounce coins off, hooks that sound like HAIM after a night out with Peaches. “SuperDrug” landed like a souped up VengaBoys but with street cred and incredibly precise choreography, it felt like a group hug disguised as a pop song. Stage presence bouncing between irony and sincerity — exactly where modern pop should live.

Insider Trading

Edinburgh’s own four-piece Insider Trading brought their jagged, textural energy up the A-road in a performance that felt like post-punk poetry colliding with shoegaze haze and Midwest emo heartbreak. Tracks like the bruising, math-edged “Spice Girl” — all stabbing guitars and sneering hooks — and the almost cinematic “Again”, with its slowcore builds and sprawling nine-minute arc, showcased a band carving out a sound both abrasive and beautiful, like Sonic Youth jamming with Slint in a damp cellar.

DOSS

DOSS stripped things back to three members and still hit like a brick. Glasgow post-punk with teeth: think young team attitude and El Dorado swigging sneer. “King of the Castle’ is delivered with poignant urgency and the sneer of early Gilla Band with thumping baselines and louder guitar parts. “Mullets Are Moving In” is gentrification commentary disguised as a banger. On “Lungs”, DOSS sound like they’re playing from inside a locked room, every note ricocheting off the walls before forcing its way out. The track moves with a nervous, compressed energy — guitars sawing at the edges, rhythm snapping tight enough to sting — while the vocal arrives less as a melody than a kind of strained exhalation. It’s a song built on pressure rather than release, simmering with the sort of discomfort that feels deliberate, even necessary. DOSS remain the benchmark against which their peers are measured.

By the end of the night, Cowgate Block Party didn’t feel like nostalgia — it felt like resistance. Bands shouting into basements, crowds pressed shoulder to shoulder, and venues that matter precisely because they’re uncomfortable, loud, and slightly falling apart.

If this is what grassroots music looks like in 2026, then good. Let it be scrappy. Let it be funny. Let it swear.

Because when those places go, you don’t just lose rooms and stages — you lose the noise, the friction, the thing that makes a scene feel alive, and that, quietly, would be the real tragedy.

Article: Angela Canavan @ zombiefang_