Fosca was a British band, combining indie pop songwriting with synthpop instrumentation. Initially, the band was formed by bassist Peter Theobalds and Orlando guitarist/lyricist Dickon Edwards plus Orlando drummer David Gray, before settling into being a vehicle for Edwards and his songs. Over the next decade, Edwards fronted several (predominantly female) lineups of the band including guitarist Charley Stone (formerly of Gay Dad). They released a total of three studio albums between 2000-2008. The band was named after the protagonist in Stephen Sondheim's Passion based upon the translation of Lawrence Venuti of the novel Fosca by Iginio Ugo Tarchetti, 1869. They received press coverage from The Independent. History The original version of Fosca was founded in the summer of 1997 as a hard rock side project by Dickon Edwards, then concurrently the guitarist and lyricist for the Romo band Orlando, together with Orlando's live drummer David Gray and a bass player named Peter Theobalds. Edwards recruited laddish lead vocalist Sav in what he would later describe as "an experiment of the Laddish Lion lying down with the Limp-wristed Lamb.". This line-up performed five concerts between September 1997 and February 1998 - the first two predating Dickon's final appearance with Orlando, which he left to concentrate on Fosca. The final concert featured Charley Stone as guest guitarist. They also recorded four tracks for a putative EP, one of which, The Leopard Of Lime Street would, later in 1998, feature on a volume of the sampler album series "Snakebite City" on Bluefire Records. In February 1998, Dickon removed Sav from the band as he felt the singer, "through not being an immediately apparent misfit, with consummate irony didn’t fit in Fosca." Initially, David Barnett, the future Suede biographer auditioned to replace Sav, however by April 1998 Theobalds and Gray had drifted away to a new band Akercocke, while Stone was otherwise committed to the band Gay Dad. After several months of inactivity, a new version of Fosca debuted on Friday 25 September 1998 at Queeruption in London. From this point forward, Dickon himself became the frontman for the band. For the first show, the band included seven members, while the next, on New Year's Eve 1998, featured only three. In early 1999, Fosca made their first attempt at recording debut album On Earth To Make The Numbers Up at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, London. This was eventually aborted after the budget ran