FOR a decade, Skye Live Festival has been redefining Scotland’s music scene, blending ancient tradition with contemporary beats against the breathtaking backdrop of the Inner Hebrides.
From humble beginnings in 2015 to becoming a sold-out success in the years that followed, the festival has helped usher in a new wave of Scottish trad-electronic fusion – and as they reflect on making the dream of bringing trad and electronic music together for a festival like no other a reality, organisers believe this year will be the best yet.
A “unique and essential festival experience”, Gaelic, traditional bands like Sian and Talisk, and electronic powerhouses such as Denis Sulta and Optimo (Espacio) have descended on Portree over the years to perform in front of music lovers from near and far.
And this year, the event is celebrating its 10th birthday – a feat they never thought they’d reach when it all began.
Founder and festival co-director Niall Munro reflected: “In 2015, it was a total leap of faith: we had no roadmap and no guarantees. For the first five, six years, we never sold out and we never made a penny. We had nights where we were running around putting up posters ourselves, sending emails at midnight, trying to get people to take a chance on what we were doing. It was a real labour of love. But we just weren’t willing to let it go.
“While Scottish traditional and electronic dance beats may seem completely at odds, there is something primal about both of them. They’re both beat-driven and there’s lots of energy. The loops in trad are actually quite similar to electronic music. You can kind of just get lost in the music and where better to get lost in one of the most beautiful places in the world?
“Now it’s the 10th anniversary, and I can’t believe we’ve made it this far. This will be a huge celebration, which will be kind of like a greatest hits, with Elephant Sessions, Kinnaris Quintet, Talisk, Lord Of The Isles and Optimo (Espacio) all on the bill.
“We’re proud that you can trace the rise of modern trad alongside Skye Live.
“When we started, bands like Elephant Sessions and Talisk were playing tiny stages. Now they’re selling out the Barrowlands. Valtos were at the festival, watching Niteworks, and it made them think: ‘We could do this.’ That’s the kind of legacy that means the most. It’s not just a festival, it’s been a platform for artists to take risks, to experiment, and to create something new.”
Ambitious plans to expand Skye Live and move it to King George’s Park in Portree in 2016, was almost the end of the festival.
Munro added: “Year two was a reality check. We thought, ‘Great, we’ve doubled the lineup, so surely ticket sales will double too.’ That didn’t happen. We stretched ourselves too thin and lost some of what made the festival special.
“Moving back to The Lump the following year was one of the best decisions we ever made. The setting is crucial to what Skye Live is – when you’re looking out over the water, with the Cuillins in the background, it doesn’t feel like any other festival. The location is as much a part of the experience as the music.”
Back at The Lump, the festival was on the rise again thanks to rave reviews and big ticket acts including Mercury Prize nominees Django Django, Highland folk supergroup Session A9, rising techno DJ Sulta, and Eigg experimental indie artist The Pictish Trail.
A major milestone came in 2019 when The Waterboys performed in an epic comeback gig on Thursday night – a new addition to the programme.
Looking back on the last 10 years, festival co-director Michael Pellegrotti said the defining moment came during the pandemic. In 2021, with the global music industry on its knees, Skye Live streamed live performances from iconic Skye locations to more than one million people from all over the world.
Pellegrotti said: “Covid could have been the end of the festival. But we decided that if people couldn’t come to Skye, we’d take Skye to them. That’s where the idea of the livestream came from. We filmed artists performing at some of the most stunning locations on the island – the Quiraing, the Cuillins, and the Old Man of Storr.
“Something magic happened. It blew up. The response was unbelievable. By the time we announced the next festival, we were selling out faster than ever before. It proved what we always knew – Skye Live isn’t just about the music, it’s about this place. That’s what makes it special.”
The festival has been praised by Gaelic speakers, with many acts performing in the Celtic language. The number of Gaelic speakers in the 2022 census has shot up to 69,701 and the proportion of people who “can speak a word or two” of Gaelic has doubled in the last 10 years.
More than 127,000 Duolingo users signed up to learn Gaelic when it launched while The Open University launched a Scots language course with 7000 people registered in 2019. Research shows that this broader support for Gaelic can be attributed – at least in part – to continued funding of Gaelic Medium Education and Gaelic arts, music and culture. In a time when Kneecap, a film mostly in the Irish language about Belfast rappers who refuse to perform in English, picked up a Bafta, it seems cultural preservation is at the forefront of people’s minds and the team at Skye Live are all for it.
Munro, son of Runrig star Donnie, said: “Ten years ago, even among fluent Gaelic speakers, there was hesitancy to use the language socially. Now, I see my younger sister and her friends speaking Gaelic naturally, and that shift has been incredible. The festival plays a small part in that. Gaelic isn’t just something to be protected – it’s something to be lived, to be part of the present. Artists like Niteworks and Sian have been so important in proving that. Gaelic belongs on a festival stage. It belongs in dance music. It belongs anywhere people want it to be.”
As Scotland’s second most popular destination, Skye’s visitor numbers have increased by almost a third since 2019 to 857,000. More than one million people were predicted to visit the Inner Hebridean island in summer 2024. Visitor numbers continue to grow each year and now exceed pre-Covid levels. Scotland-wide, music tourism pulled in more than 1.5 million tourists to local areas in 2022, delivering a £581 million boost to the Scottish economy.
Despite these encouraging figures, the team at Skye Live values quality over quantity and strives to maintain the intimate feel of the weekend-long party.
Munro said: “There’s this assumption that growth means getting bigger. But that’s not what we want. Skye Live works because it’s small. You don’t lose yourself in a crowd of 50,000 people – you’re part of something intimate. That energy is what makes it special.
"We’d rather refine what we have, and introduce things like the Thursday night gig. It’s about keeping it feeling like a gathering rather than an industry event.”
Skye Live runs this year from Thursday, May 8- 11, and tickets can be purchased from the Skye Live website
