Dubstar FAQ

Contact Dubstar for interviews, live shows and DJ appearances using this email address hello@dubstarofficial.com

Almost all of the music Dubstar released with Food Records can be found on major streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.

You can hear many unreleased songs that were recorded in the 2000s and 2010s on the United States of Being and United States of Being V2 pages.

There is a huge collection of previously unheard Dubstar songs available on the Dubstar Archive too.

A Dubstar reunion is unlikely as Steve Hillier regularly expresses a hesitance for ‘re-enacting the 1990s’ and prefers to ‘investigate other artistic possibilities’. Also, both Sarah Blackwood and Chris Wilkie have expressed difficulties with touring due to health problems.

Blackwood and Wilkie have released some recordings as a duo using the Dubstar name.

Yes, this will happen but there is no currently published release date

The act headlined the NME tent at Reading Festival in 1996
Every single and every album Dubstar released charted in the UK
Dubstar’s first album ‘Disgraceful’ was certified Gold in the UK in 1996
’Stars’ reached number one in Israel in 1996
Dubstar sold over half a million records between 1995 and 2000

Steve Hillier [songwriting & computers] from Welling, South London born 14th May 1969
Sarah Blackwood[vocals] from Halifax born 8th May 1971
Chris Wilkie [guitars] from Gateshead born 25th January 1973
Paul Wadsworth was the act’s drummer from 1995 to 2000

Sarah Blackwood (born 8th May 1971) from Halifax, West Yorkshire.

Having formed Dubstar in 1991, Steve Hillier left the act in 2000 before the release of the third album Make It Better due to Sarah Blackwood’s increasingly erratic behaviour. Steve reformed Dubstar in 2006 but left the act in January 2014 citing irreconcilable differences over the musical and financial direction of the act.

You can receive regular updates about Dubstar from the official Bluesky account.

The Dubstar Archivereleases a previously unheard Dubstar song every month. Subscribe to keep up with new releases!

Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne

Steve Hillier met Chris Wilkie at Walkers Nightclub in Newcastle in 1991 where Steve was DJing. Steve was looking for a bass player to join him to form a band with himself on vocals and guitar.

Instead, he and Wilkie both played guitar with additional instrumentation being provided by samplers and synthesizers. The initial incarnation of the act was called ‘Perfect Tone Series’ with Hillier on Vocals and Guitar, Wilkie on Guitar, Gavin Lee on Drums and Mark Greenwood on bass. The act was renamed ‘The Joans’ in late 1992 and initially became a trio, then a duo when Gavin Lee left to concentrate on a career at British Airways. 

In the summer of 1993, Danilo Moscardini, a friend of Hillier’s, left a cassette of his girlfriend singing in his flat in Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne. After Danilo left to meet Roger Newbrook in the hotel bar at the top of Hillier’s road in Jesmond, Steve listened to the cassette and heard Sarah Blackwood’s voice for the first time. He immediately rang Chris Wilkie to tell him we should have this woman in the act.

Wilkie was not initially keen on the idea but later changed his mind. Hillier then met Blackwood at the Barley Mow pub in Newcastle upon Tyne but didn’t invite Blackwood into the act until a month later when Blackwood rang him to remind him! 

The first gig as a trio with Blackwood on vocals was in late August 1993 at the Broken Doll pub in Newcastle upon Tyne. 

Dubstar were signed to Food Records by Andy Ross in November 1994.

The name was chosen to fit the Dub-Reggae-influenced music of the early Dubstar recordings. In 1994 the band was known as The Joans but was changed to Dubstar by manager Graeme Robinson when he was told by Andy Ross that the band would not be signed if they had a ‘wimpy indie band name’.

No, at least not in its original lineup. The act that recorded Disgraceful, Goodbye, Make It Better and the two United States of Being albums consisted of Steve Hillier, Sarah Blackwood and Chris Wilkie. This version of Dubstar was active between 1991 and 2014, although the act had several break-ups and reformations during that period. Hillier stopped working with Blackwood and Wilkie in 2014. Since 2018, Sarah Blackwood and Chris Wilkie have recorded and released new music together using the Dubstar band name. Steve Hillier has no involvement.

Being based in Newcastle and away from London, Dubstar did not fit into any specific scene but was regularly referred to as either ‘synth pop’, ’dreampop’, ‘sophisti-pop’, ’electro pop’ or ‘indie pop’. Although sometimes grouped in with the ‘Britpop’ era of British alternative acts, Dubstar’s music was almost entirely synthesiser-based and drew influences from the classic 4AD Records releases of the 1980s and the ‘alternative dance’ scene of the early 1990s. 

Stated influences included Cocteau Twins, Andrew Weatherall, Charles Aznavour, The Smiths and Durutti Column.

Steve Hillier wrote almost all the songs recorded by Dubstar. Dubstar released 65 songs with Food Records, 54 of which were written by Steve Hillier of which 6 were co-written with Chris Wilkie and a further 6 were co-written with Wilkie and Sarah Blackwood. Wilkie wrote 4 songs alone. Dubstar released 7 cover songs.

Dubstar also recorded an additional 6 songs for the unreleased Dubstar EP from 2000 and 37 songs across both versions of the unreleased albums United States of Being versions 1 and 2, all of which were written by Hillier.

Stephen Hague produced Goodbye and co-produced Disgraceful with Dubstar’s then manager Graeme Robinson. The third Dubstar album Make It Better production credit was Dubstar and Mike ‘Spike’ Drake. The two unreleased United States of Being albums were produced by Steve Hillier in Brighton.

Dubstar toured as special guests with Erasure in 1996 and the Lightning Seeds in 1997. Ian Broudie of the Lightning Seeds sang a duet with Sarah Blackwood on the ‘Self Same Thing EP’, which also featured a duet with Gary Numan. Both songs were specially written for the release by Steve Hillier.

Lyrically, the song explores the assault of a pensioner in a tower block, shifting perspectives between the attacker, the victim, and a third-person narrator. ‘Not So Manic Now’ was written by the little-known Wakefield band Brick Supply. It was discovered by Steve Hillier, who received a cassette of the song from Graeme Robinson of Circulation Recordings, a Darlington based record label, while DJing at Middlesbrough Arena. The track is actually a fusion of two separate songs by Brick Supply, which were combined during a recording session in Darlington in the early 1990s.

A photographer based in North London named Rob Steele. He also provided the photography for Goodbye. The typography and graphic design was provided by Attik.

Dubstar released eight singles, all of which charted in the UK, seven of which made the UK Top 40 (Cathedral Park’s highest position was 41) and three made the Top 20. ‘The Self Same Thing’ EP was released in 2000.

The song Stars, written by Steve Hillier reached number 15 in the UK TOP 40 singles chart. More details can be found on this dedicated page.  Together with ‘Not So Manic Now’ and ‘No More Talk’ it is still regularly played by radio stations across the world. 

Three, each of which charted in the UK. Two albums entitled United States of Being were recorded when the act reformed in 2006 but have not yet had an official release. This page features United States of Being and this page features United States of Being V2

Disgraceful1995 (awarded Gold status in 1996)
Goodbye1997
Make It Better2000

A ‘best of Dubstar’ was released by EMI in 2004 initially including a previously unheard demo version of the song ‘When the World Knows Your Name’ and hidden track in the form of the acoustic version of Stars (which was originally the B-Side of the single ‘No More Talk’).

One (2018) and Two (2022) are albums released by Sarah Blackwood and Chris Wilkie using the Dubstar name without Steve Hillier. They were financed independently on their own label Northern Writes. One was produced by Youth and Two continued the duo’s long-term association with Stephen Hague. Hague produced the band's earlier albums Disgraceful and Goodbye and worked with Hillier, Blackwood and Wilkie on the unreleased United States of Being albums. Both One and Two received positive reviews, and Two marked Dubstar's first UK Albums Chart entry since 1997 (on the chart for one week at number 86 in May 2022).

Disgraceful: many of the songs on this album were written when Steve Hillier was still a student at Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School. Not So Manic Now was a cover version of a song by Wakefield band Brick Supply. 

Goodbye: …was initially to be entitled ‘Death is the End’ but was changed when the title was thought to be too negative. For some reason.

Make It Better: was recorded in the Arts Centre Newcastle upon Tyne in a studio built by the act specifically for the album. The closest any member of the act lived to any other member during the recording of the album was 144 miles (with Sarah Blackwood living in Manchester and Chris Wilkie in Gateshead…Steve Hillier was 267 miles away in Brighton).

United States of Being: There wasn’t an official title to this fourth Dubstar album until news of its recording was leaked onto Wikipedia using the title of one of the main songs.

United States of Being Version Two:…was mixed in Malta by trance legend Tim Mason.

Steve Hillier left Dubstar for the first time in July 2000 prior to the release of Make It Better citing his inability to work with Sarah Blackwood. Dubstar ended in November 2000 when EMI Records declined to exercise their option for a fourth album. Dubstar was dropped from the roster. 

Sarah Blackwood joined Technique to replace the departing singer Xan. This band would become Client and be signed to Toast Hawaii, a label formed by Andrew Fletcher of Depeche Mode.

Steve Hillier and Chris Wilkie worked with Mark Owen on his number four single ‘Four Minute Warning’, with Hillier cowriting the B-Side ‘Live If You Try’.

Hillier continued songwriting, remixing and production, working with a wide variety of artists including Bebel Gilberto, Hooverphonic, Elkka, Landon Pigg, Karen Mok, Flosstradamus and Hannah Trigwell. He also produced a session with the nascent and then unknown Sussex band Keane in Brighton for BMG Records in 2002.

Dubstar reformed with the original lineup of Steve Hillier, Sarah Blackwood and Chris Wilkie in 2006 to record a new album unofficially entitled ‘United States of Being’. This was suddenly abandoned in 2008 when Sarah Blackwood left Dubstar to concentrate on her commitments to Client. 

A further reformation was attempted by Blackwood in late 2009 after she left Client and another album was completed (untitled at the time but now known as United States of Being version 2). Dubstar played a variety of gigs in this period including a ‘comeback’ show at The Lexington in London, a benefit for the making of a documentary about the Riverside venue at The Cluny in Newcastle, and with Human League in Tynemouth.

Steve Hillier left the act again in early 2014 following these shows citing reluctance to play the 90s nostalgia circuit and stating ‘the time for more Dubstar has long passed’ in an interview on Introducing on BBC Sussex in 2015.

Both United States of Being albums remain unreleased in full. In 2023 Hillier began releasing selected songs from the sessions on the Dubstar Archive YouTube Channel.

Steve Hillier lives in Brighton and continues songwriting with contemporary artists as well as releasing music under his own name and with Brighton Cassette Club. He wrote and taught creativity, music technology and songwriting degree courses for Falmouth (Waterbear), Sussex (BIMM) and Middlesex Universities (Point Blank) from 2004 to 2025, and writes on these subjects for various websites.

Sarah Blackwood performed in Client from 2001 to 2010, and is a fitness instructor.

Chris Wilkie lives in North Tyneside.

In recent years Sarah Blackwood and Chris Wilkie have recorded new music together reusing the name Dubstar. They released their self-financed albums ‘One’ and ‘Two’ and associated singles in 2018 and 2022.