Dan sadly passed away suddenly in September 2024. The site has been updated as a lasting legacy and tribute to the work and talent of our dear friend, founding member, and band-mate.
Daniel Hall - Vocals and Guitars
Tenure in BAiT
1996-2002Birthplace
Woking, Surrey, England
Band Biography
Dan, together with Andy Pitcher and John Chivers, was a founding member of BAiT in the summer of 1996.
Meeting John in 1990 while both students in Coventry, Dan and John formed Scapegoat with fellow Band Society member, Neil Crump. The band played a few gigs, playing songs written solely by Dan until John left for his year of study abroad.
Fast forward a year and Dan and John reunited in a new band, Kid Gloves, which, for a short period, included Andy. Ultimately, Andy moved on, but the band wasn't really fulfilling Dan's song-writing desires and he'd developed a respect for Andy's musicianship and song-writing skills while Andy had played with Kid Gloves.
Contacting Andy in summer 1996, Dan was looking for a way to cooperate on a song-writing partnership and band. John was duly contacted and BAiT was born with its first and founding line-up.
Dan's house formed the basis of those early band get-togethers, sat around the table in his dining room with acoustic instruments, working together on songs, with great emphasis on vocal harmonies and strong melodies. It was an extremely productive period and within a year, the band had worked on and rehearsed 20 original songs.
Dan's tenure with the band saw it push its song-writing as a unit and as individual members and the effort he put into the band while holding down demanding jobs, involving lots of travel, showed true dedication.
He was modest enough to accept constructive criticism, even when it would demoralise mere mortals, and always put the band before any notions of it being a vehicle for his solo endeavours, happily sharing lead vocals with Andy (and occasionally John). He always believed in the maxim of serving the song and the band as an entity.
During Dan's time with the band, it performed over 200 gigs, predominantly around the Midlands, but also including a seven-day stint in Nice, France. Though the band pragmatically turned to performing predominantly covers live, in order to fund the purchase of recording and live equipment, no gig was performed without BAiT songs being sneaked in to the set somewhere. As a result of this, it became, over time and through increased attention to detail, a far tighter musical unit.
Dan featured on the band's initial demos and then subsequently on the band's first two albums: Not In My Back Yard (2000) and Shut Up And Take A Seat (2002).
Developments in Dan's personal life meant that he informed the band that he was returning to his native Woking at the end of 2002, so the band bade him a reluctant but celebratory farewell at his final gig in on New Year's Eve, 2002.
He went on to start a family in Woking and raise a daughter, while starting his own building company, and loyally following his beloved Woking FC.
The second iteration of the band never got back to anything like the level of live work it had while Dan was involved, preferring a more reflective and studio-based approach to original music and to forgo playing cover versions completely.
Dan died suddenly and far too soon on 19 September 2024, aged just 54.