Black Country punk rock band win eight-month plagiarism battle against Dutch rivals
PUNK rockers from the Black Country have fallen out with a Dutch band over claims that a song had been 'borrowed' without permission.
Trio Flatline Stereo today claimed victory following an eight-month battle with Call It Off.
The group claim they only discovered the Dutch band had used their tune 'Sorry' after a fan exposed the copied song on Facebook in January.
Lead singer and guitarist Mr Bucknall, who is from Wednesfield, said: "Sorry is a song I had written back in 2007 about a very personal experience and it still means as much to me now as it did back then.
"As you can imagine, we heard the track and felt physically sick. We are an independent band, we do everything ourselves.
"From writing, recording, booking our own shows and self-releasing our own original material. We don’t make money from this band, we do it purely for the love of it."
Flatline Stereo, which formed seven years ago, officially released Sorry in August 2012 on album Rock N’ Roll, Punk & Soul.
Call It Off's version of the song was spotted online after the band published a Facebook post talking about the track, with a Flatline Stereo fan commenting ‘hey Leigh Bucky, does this sound familiar?’.
Soon after, the Black Country trio realised the Dutch group had released the tune as their own after signing to record label Sony.
Mr Buckley, who performs alongside Sedgley's Dan Gill on bass and Jimmy Stix on drums, said: "When I clicked through on to the post and watched the video, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
"It was an exact copy of a song we’d put out on Facebook in 2011 and officially released in 2012. Melody, chorus, title the lot.
"Without me even commenting the post was taken down and I was blocked from searching their page.
"We tried contacting their publisher to stop the song from being released but they just replied it couldn’t possibly be our song."
Flatline Stereo sent a series of emails to the Dutch band by email, offering to show evidence to prove the song was in fact their own.
Eventually Call It Off's publisher agreed to settle the dispute and sent an email in which it agreed to hand over 100 per cent of the writing credits to the Black Country musicians.
Mr Bucknall added: "They couldn’t produce any evidence of the song's history that pre dated ours. They had nowhere to go.
"I’d got demos going back to 2007. It’s frustrating that it took eight months for them to hand back the rights to our song."
Call It Off's management Along The Way and record label Sony did not respond to requests for comment.
