Band name: State of Quo — one of the UK's longest established and most popular tributes to Status Quo.

Members names, age and where they are from:

Paul Carr — rhythm guitar and vocals

Ian Hill — lead guitar and vocals

Dave Owen — drums

Andrew Marsden — bass guitar

Paul lives in Bolton, while the rest of the band are from South Manchester.

Our ages? — Let's just say we're old enough to know better!

When and where did you form?

Paul Carr originally formed the band in 1995!

There have been a few line-up changes over the years but the current line up has been together since December 2011.

What is your sound and who are your influences?

As a tribute to Status Quo, we tend to play mainly tracks from their classic albums of the 1970s — heavier rock tracks that are probably more familiar to an actual Quo Fan than the general public, who only know Quo for songs like Whatever You Want and Rocking all over the World. We do also feature a few songs from more recent albums, but the majority of what we play is from Quo's 'heavier' era. We don't use keyboards, which can be slightly restrictive when choosing songs to play, but we try to perform the songs we do play as faithfully as possible to the original recordings

What is the biggest gig you have played to date?

In the past couple of years, we've been lucky to have played some amazing tribute festivals and biker rallies around the country, where we were playing to thousands of people — they were fantastic!

Probably the best gig any of us have played would be Manchester Academy III in April last year.

The original Status Quo line up were playing a reunion gig at Manchester Apollo, so we organised an afternoon gig at Academy III as a 'warm up' for the fans going to the Apollo. We expected 50 — 60 people to show up, maybe 100 if we were lucky. The venue was packed! The crowd was beyond anything we had imagined and the reaction we got was amazing. I think we said on the day that it was the best audience any of us had ever played for.

If you are not already, is it your ambition to become professional?

We would love to see State of Quo reach the level that tribute bands like Limehouse Lizzy and Livewire (AC/DC) have reached, but it takes a lot of hard work and passion to get there. You have to be 100% committed to a band to make it work and that can be difficult sometimes when you're not a professional act — there are always going to be varying degrees of commitment within a non-professional band and everyone is going to have slightly different priorities inside and outside of the band. However, in the words of a Quo song — Never Say Never

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

State of Quo — The 30th Anniversary Tour? That's very unlikely, but you never know! Apart from their new drummer, Status Quo themselves are all well into their 60s now and still touring, still rocking. There's no reason to think that we couldn't still be performing in 10 years time if we wanted to.

Upcoming gigs?

Locally, we are playing The Railway Venue in Bromley Cross tomorrow, supporting Quo's bass player John 'Rhino' Edwards and his 'solo' band Rhino's Revenge. We are supporting him on five dates of his UK Tour in March. We're also back at The Railway in our own right on June 27, playing a tribute double-header with our good friends Black Rose — an excellent Bolton/Manchester based Thin Lizzy Tribute.

We've also got some exciting festival events again this year, some of which haven't been officially announced yet.

All our gig dates and other information can be found on our new official website — stateofquo.co.uk