A one-time Gloucestershire age group cricketer has swapped his wicketkeeping gloves for the guitar, and these days is a successful singer/songwriter with an ever-growing army of fans.

Cheltenham-born Laurie Wright fronts his own band, a band that is making a name for themselves both in the UK and across Europe.

And the 34-year-old has been impressing some of the biggest names in the music industry with Liam Gallagher, Sir Rod Stewart, Pete Doherty and Carl Barat all having good words to say about him.

And it’s easy to see why. Wright’s lyrics, more often than not autobiographical, are imaginative, clever and wide-ranging.

His music is raw and energetic, but he is far more than just a rock & roll star.

“He gets a little frustrated when he’s referenced solely as a rock & roller,” said his dad Rich, who still lives in Cheltenham with Laurie’s mum Carol.

“Influences such as The Small Faces, The Kinks and The Jam have inspired Laurie and he adores punk. Within a certain amount of his output you can clearly hear the punk influence.

“But he can write a ballad too, there’s a lot of light and shade. He can give it full throttle or he can write a song that builds slowly.”

The former Bournside School pupil gives it full throttle when belting out the track On My Tod but another song, Sentiment of Strength, shows his huge versatility.

“He wrote that for my mother’s funeral, he also sang it at her funeral,” said Rich, an ex-school teacher and a cricket fan who played primarily for Cheltenham King George back in the day.

Laurie and his brother George shared their dad’s love of cricket in their formative years.

They both played for Gloucestershire Young Cricketers with Rich saying: “Laurie was a good wicketkeeper and he played for the county for quite a few years. He lost his place in the under-15s to Chris Dent who was a much better batsman.”

Dent, of course, went on to have a successful career with Gloucestershire, who he also captained.

The young Laurie, who these days lives in Twickenham, also played for Cheltenham 2nds and 3rds for a handful of summers but by then the sound of bat on ball was running a very distant second to the sound of an acoustic guitar.

In truth, it probably always was.

A photo taken when he was aged four, guitar in hand and wearing sunglasses, was used as the CD cover for the song Butter Side Up Boy and his dad added: “Laurie went to piano lessons from the age of seven but he became more attracted to the guitar in his early teens.

“He had a few guitar lessons at the time but once he got his own instrument he took to teaching himself.

“Things really took off when he got his first electric guitar on eBay – a Stratocaster that’s still in use.”

Laurie has said in the past that getting a guitar when he was 14 was the real breakthrough for him.

Before that he’d played the drums as well the piano, but at that time had never written anything. He says he found the guitar more of a player’s instrument.

“I remember when we were on holiday once and he was sitting in the house with his guitar,” continued Rich. “I tried to get him out, telling him to ‘Stop strumming that guitar!’

“I’ll always remember his reply as he rather patiently said, ‘Dad, I’m writing these songs, I’m not just strumming!’. He was 15 at the time.”

Rich admits that it was his wife, also a former primary school teacher, who had the greater influence on Laurie’s early musical direction.

“We were late 60s kids, we were both born in 1954,” said Rich. “Both Laurie and George grew up listening to a wide variety of music including The Beatles, Stones, Alanis Morissette, The Specials and Prince, to name a few.”

Laurie has great memories of those days and, typically, he was into a wide range of music.

Initially it was Blink 182 when he was aged 10 before moving onto hip hop and grime.

His older brother also played a big part in his music development because at 13 he gave him a couple of Libertines albums.

Laurie says that was a game-changer because, soon after, he got his first guitar and taught himself to play all their songs.

Laurie readily admits that he was obsessed by music. He loved the Arctic Monkeys and Alex Turner’s lyrics about riot vans, underage drinking and bigger boys stealing their girlfriends at school.

That’s when he started writing songs and, he says, turned him back onto Oasis and then onto The Stone Roses and The Beatles.

The one thing all those bands have in common, of course, is great songwriting ability but Laurie says that his favourite songwriter is Rodriguez, someone he discovered after watching Searching for Sugar Man, which he says is his favourite film.

But while Laurie is currently enjoying the good times it has by no means been a straightforward journey to get to where he is now, quite the opposite in fact, and it’s something that he does not try to hide.

On leaving school at 18, a short and unsuccessful spell at Brighton Institute of Modern Music followed. Laurie then moved to Bristol and London, living in a variety of accommodation including bedsits, communal flats and sofa-surfing.

For nine years from the age of 19, Laurie was addicted to alcohol and cocaine.

He admits it was a period when he was never on time with his rent payments, and he says he was kicked out of every house he was living in during this time.

Laurie, who says he had a loving upbringing, talks freely about the parties and having people over on weeknights, explaining that he would stay between sofas of friends, dealers or party houses.

When things got really tough he would go home to his parents with the intention of cleaning up his act but he admits that once he’d left Cheltenham he would go straight off the rails again.

But despite his lifestyle he said the only nights he slept rough were when he was too inebriated to get to the sofa or floor he was crashing on.

That happened from time to time and he does recall being picked up by The Samaritans off a pavement in Camden where he’d slept the night and then being given breakfast and some money for a travel card.

Laurie went into rehab not long before Covid in 2020, which he spent in his hometown with his parents.

During the first Lockdown, Laurie’s love of music helped him on the long road to recovery.

He started live streaming from his bedroom, selling merchandise and releasing a Lockdown album and single.

A growing number of followers listened in and, together with past musical contacts, he was able to rebuild his band.

He speaks warmly of all the people, including his parents, who have helped him on the road back to good health and he’s certainly making the most of his undeniable talent these days.

Laurie has a Wednesday evening residency at the Marquis in Covent Garden but he also tours all over the UK and across Europe – Spain, France, Germany and Sweden this year alone – and his third album, Power of 3, will be released before the end of the year.

It's going to be a busy few months for Laurie because he is looking forward to returning to Cheltenham for a gig in the new year, while before Christmas his band will headline the Electric Ballroom at Camden Town on Tuesday 16^th December to celebrate the new album release.

Since performing at Glastonbury as a 16-year-old, he's come a long way.

He's supported both The Stranglers and The Libertines to name just a couple of highlights, and his latest album promises to be his best yet.