Collection: Out Lines

Three of the country's most intriguing, exciting artists come together as Out Lines to release Conflats, a gorgeous set of songs inspired by stories of hardship and sorrow, redemption and hope.

The first detailed maps of Scotland from the late 1500s show the now East End of Glasgow suburb Easterhouse labelled 'Conflat', a name derived from the flat farmland where corn and wheat were grown. By the 1950s the area was being developed with the intention of providing improved and affordable housing for people on the city's outskirts. But in the years and decades to follow, Easterhouse became the backdrop to low employment, crime, riots, gangs, violence and substance abuse. In recent years the creation of Platform, the arts centre at the heart of The Bridge complex, has provided a centre point of creativity and community cohesion vital to the area's regeneration.

In early 2016, Platform's music programmer, ex-Delgado and Chemikal Underground Records co-chief, Alun Woodward, asked The Twilight Sad's James Graham if he would be involved in the Outskirts Festival - Platform's annual celebration of largely left-field, cross art form experimentation, taking in the Easterhouse Conversations project. Graham was to choose an artist he wished to work with, before conducting a series of interviews with a cross-section of local people, with the discussions to serve as a basis for a series of original collaborative songs that would be performed at a one-off show in April of the same year. Based on his admiration for her 2015 Scottish Album of the Year Award winning debut, Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I've Spilled, Graham asked an initially reluctant Kathryn Joseph if she and musical partner, Marcus Mackay, would join him on the endeavour.