Runway Lights

Runway Lights are a five-piece rock band from Dublin.

Their defining sound emerges from the adventurous musicality of brothers Shane and Oisin O’Neill, with Shane’s melodic, sonorous, and often startling arpeggios and progressions in constant conversation with Oisin’s enveloping soundscapes and riotous, explosive guitar playing.

Louise O’Hanlon’s versatile vocals range from salving to sultry to stormy, her thoughtful and introspective lyrics forming songs at once melancholy and joyous, tranquil and furious.

The rhythm section of Colm Keenan (drums) and Ronan Parker (bass) works to intensify or playfully subvert O’Hanlon’s songs, bringing the music in genre-crossing rhythmic directions.

They released their debut EP “What Defines a Villain” in 2019, with singles “Crash” and “Broad Strokes” being named track of the day on Hot Press and Joe.ie. Critics described the EP as “delicately charming, tranquilizing and heavily dynamic…each track builds and grows wonderfully to create hair raising crescendos and explosive instrumental highs” (Indie Buddie), and “Music that on one hand holds a loving lullaby at its heart but works in just the right amount of darker undertones. Meticulously arranged with a unique and almost haunting vocal.” (Hot Press Magazine).

Following the EP launch and an appearance at Whelan’s Ones To Watch festival in 2019, further plans were delayed by lockdown in 2020. The band took this time to experiment with new sounds, and write and record a new set of songs, scheduled for release in 2023.