Stornoway began quietly one freshers' week at Oxford University, when lead singer and principal songwriter Brian Briggs approached Jon Ouin (keys/banjo/electric guitar/cello) and asked if he happened to like Teenage Fanclub. They began playing music together soon afterwards, in the dining hall of Wolfson College and immediately set to work on their own fledgling compositions. A short while later they were emboldened enough to enter the college talent competition, where they were runners-up to a group of Norse singers, and received a consolation prize of a large bowl of fruit.

Spurred on by this success, they recorded a handful of demos on Ouin's 8-track, and placed an ad for a bass player in the local paper. The sole respondent was Ollie Steadman, then still a sixth form student, who sent Briggs and Ouin a strikingly formal application for the position of bassist, and turned up to the audition armed with a screwdriver, lest his new bandmates turned out to be dangerous thugs. The final addition was Steadman's younger brother, Rob, who was finally given an opportunity to audition after the band had endured a succession of woefully bad drummers. (Live performances are augmented by Briggs' brother Adam on trumpet and Rahul Satija on violin — both of whom also make appearances on Beachcomber's Windowsill). They practised, then, in freezing cold garages and crowded around the bed in Briggs' bedroom; they played live around the venues of Oxford, often to the smallest of audiences, and soon they caught the eye of Tim Bearder, a DJ from BBC Oxford who was so instantly smitten that he devoted an entire show to the band.