Biography
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Born
5 July 1964 (age 59)
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Born In
Parsons Green, Hammersmith and Fulham, London, England, United Kingdom
Antoinette "Toni" Halliday (born July 1964 in Parsons Green, Fulham) is an English musician best known as the lead vocalist, lyricist, and occasional guitarist of the band Curve.
Halliday officially left Curve on 31 January 2005, having served as the group's lead singer since 1991. In Curve, she had worked with multi-instrumentalist Dean Garcia; their collaboration had spawned a number of singles, EPs, and full-length albums. The latter include the following: Doppelgänger (1992), Cuckoo (1993), Come Clean (1998), Open Day at the Hate Fest (2001), Gift (2001), The New Adventures of Curve (2002), and the compilation The Way of Curve (2004).
Toni Halliday's style of singing — influenced at the same time by the warm tone of The Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde, the more exotic warble of the Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser and the deep voices of Nico and Siouxsie — could be argued to have been an influence on Shirley Manson, vocalist of post-grunge pop-rockers Garbage. It has been claimed that in their music, Garbage appropriated large portions of Curve's musical template, and constructed from it more 'mainstream' material, albeit with a certain 'edge' remaining. Curve and Halliday, meanwhile, never found the same degree of commercial success - perhaps as a result of their unwillingness to adapt their sound to the demands of musical trends.
The first commercially-released recording to feature Toni Halliday was the Bonk single "The Smile and the Kiss" (1983), on which she performed uncredited backing vocals. The following year, Halliday's first band The Uncles released the single "What's the Use of Pretending"; the singer then returned to performing backing vocals for other artists, and was featured on the Robert Plant album Shaken 'n' Stirred (1985), and its follow-up Now and Zen (1988).
In 1985, Halliday and Dean Garcia formed the band State Of Play together with Garcia's wife and Eurythmics drummer Olle Romö. The following year, State Of Play released an LP on Virgin Records titled "Balancing the Scales" - a non-hit album that spawned two non-hit singles: "Natural Colour" and "Rock-a-bye Baby".
After the subsequent demise of State Of Play, Halliday launched an only marginally more successful solo career. Her album "Hearts And Handshakes" (produced by the singer with Alan Moulder) was released in 1989, and four singles were taken from it: "Weekday", "Love Attaction", "Time Turns Around", and "Woman In Mind". Dean Garcia also played on the album, even though he and Halliday were not on speaking terms during this period.
Following the emergence of Curve in 1991, Halliday co-wrote and performed vocals on two songs for the 1992 Recoil album Bloodline, and also put in guest appearances on The Future Sound of London's Lifeforms (1994) and Leftfield's Leftism (1995). Other artists with whom Halliday has collaborated include Paul van Dyk, DJ? Acucrack, Acid Android, and Freaky Chakra.
In 1995, a year after the first, temporary dissolution of Curve, Halliday formed the band Scylla. The group's only recording to have been officially released is "Helen's Face", which can be found on the soundtrack album for the film Showgirls. Another Scylla song, "Get A Helmet", appears in the Gregg Araki film Nowhere.
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