Belfast, Northern Ireland, five-piece Catoan had been together for over a year before they decided to call themselves a band. Previous to this, they had been billed as "Paddy McKeown and band" after their multi-talented frontman. McKeown had been recording and performing solo since 2003 and only felt comfortable uniting with his band if he was sure they were there to stay. McKeown's classically inflected, bel canto tenor remains the group's primary focal point, but the sound is of a distinguished whole which takes in influences as wide ranging as rock, metal, folk, jazz, classical, and minimalism. Though superficially compared to Radiohead and Jeff Buckley, Catoan supplements the standard rock setup with a full-time violinist and part-time tenor sax player, and their lengthy pieces traverse a range of styles without necessarily committing to one or the other. This tendency makes the band difficult to categorize, but it hasn't inhibited their commercial success, which has steadily grown outward from their Belfast base.