Life Without Buildings were Robert, Chris and Will — a group of mostly Glasgow School of Art students who joined forces in the summer of 1999, with vocalist Sue Tompkins joining a little later in the year. They weren’t active for too long, eventually disbanding in 2002 after the release of their first and final record, Any Other City.

Embarking on a tour with Belle and Sebastian and playing countless shows across the country, the band are surprisingly pretty undocumented; a few fuzzy live videos recorded at the now closed Beat Room in Glasgow resurfaced on YouTube a few years ago, but give or take a handful of interviews and a live recording from a show in Sydney (which was finally pressed to vinyl by Rough Trade for Record Store Day 2025), there’s not much out there.

There’s a mystery to them; the kind that leaves you wanting to fill in the gaps for yourself, but Life Without Buildings existed for as long as they needed to; capturing lightning in a bottle and releasing a record that sound like nothing else.