The Enemy

The Enemy rose fast up the indie ranks with their anthemic rock pumped with youthful punk swagger. The Coventry-raised trio of singer/guitarist Tom Clarke, bassist Andy Hopkins and drummer Liam Watts formed The Enemy in 2006 as teens. In their first year, they built up a collection of scrappy rockers and an impressive number of fans with their rambunctious live shows. With Clarke’s punkish snarls and the band’s fast, infectious hooks, The Enemy tore through the festival circuit, opened for bands like Oasis and The Rolling Stones and compiled a number of UK hits with their 2007 debut album, We’ll Live and Die in These Towns and 2009 follow-up Music for the People. That momentum would take them into the next decade, which saw two more albums—including their final release, 2015’s It’s Automatic, a mix of polished, synth-lined anthems—before the trio called it quits in 2016. They played their final show in their hometown of Coventry, leaving behind a decade’s worth of working-class-hero fist-pumpers and stadium-rock sing-alongs.