Velvet emerged in 1998 as a Rome-based Italian rock outfit shaped by Britpop currents, with Giancarlo Cornetta handling drums, Pier Luigi Ferrantini on vocals and guitar, Alessandro Sgreccia on guitar, and Pierfrancesco Bazzoffi on bass. The summer of 2000 brought their debut single “Tokyo Eyes,” followed in 2001 by an appearance at the San Remo Festival performing “Nascosto Dietro un Vetro.” Both tracks found their way onto the band’s first EMI release, Versomarte, whose centerpiece was the enormous hit “Boyband,” a pointed satire of manufactured boy-band culture. Momentum carried into the 2002 follow-up Cose Comuni, which featured a widely admired reading of Edoardo Bennato’s “Una Settimana, un Giorno.” During summer 2003 Velvet served as support act for Simply Red, Macy Gray, Craig David, and Alanis Morissette. The album 10 Motivi arrived in 2004; a revised edition the next year incorporated “Dovevo Dirti Molte Cose,” the number the group had presented at the 2005 San Remo Festival. A live recording surfaced in 2006, the same year Velvet—by then among Italy’s leading pop acts—was invited to the Rome Live 8 event on July 2. Their final studio album, simply titled Velvet, came out in March 2007.
