Early career

The band was formed in 2001 by guitarist Anup Kutty with an original lineup of singer/songwriter Sarabjit Chadha and acoustic guitarist Inder Pal Singh (IP). The trio became a full fledged band after recruiting bassist Randeep Singh and drummer Rahul Chatterjee. In a country where popular music is dominated with commercial Bollywood

Bollywood

Bollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai , Maharashtra, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the total Indian film industry, which includes other production centers producing...

 music and the live rock music scene is generally full of cover bands, Menwhopause stuck to playing original compositions and were one of the first bands in India to distribute their music for free over the internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

. Their first EP

Extended play

An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...

 called The story begins... was released online as a free download in 2003. Ever since its formation, the band has gone through two line-up changes - the first with original drummer Rahul Chatterjee being replaced by Hemendra Nath "Hemzi" in 2008. The current line-up includes French drummer Paul Schneiter.

Album and tour

In 2006 they released their first full length album Home on their own record label, "The Middle Earth Company". The album gained the band international recognition, making them the first Indian rock band to be invited to perform at the SxSW festival in Austin, Texas

Austin, Texas

Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...

. The band's tour was sponsored by the Indian Centre for Cultural Relations, which made them the first ever rock band to be supported by the cultural arm of the Government of India.
The band also did a month long tour of the southwestern United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 playing in around 10 cities in and around Texas.
In February 2008, the band won an online poll for the Best Band of the Year 2007 conducted by Jack Daniel's

Jack Daniel's

Jack Daniel's is a brand of sour mash Tennessee whiskey that is among the world's best-selling liquors. It is known for its square bottles and black label. As of November, 2007, one blogger was claiming that it was the best-selling whiskey in the world. It is produced in Lynchburg, Tennessee by...

 in India. This got them a chance to fly to Lynchburg, Tennessee

Lynchburg, Tennessee

Lynchburg is a city in the south-central region of the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is governed by a consolidated city-county government unit whose boundaries coincide with those of Moore County. Lynchburg is best known as the location of the Jack Daniel's distillery, whose famous whiskey is...

 in April 2008 where they performed at the Legendary Mash Festival and worked with R.E.M.

R.E.M.

R.E.M. was an American rock band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980 by singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry. One of the first popular alternative rock bands, R.E.M. gained early attention due to Buck's ringing, arpeggiated guitar style and Stipe's...

's producer David Barbe

David Barbe

David Barbe is an American musician and producer/engineer from Athens, Georgia and director of the Music Business Certificate Program at the University of Georgia. He is chief of Chase Park Transduction studio in Athens...

.
The band signed a major record deal with EMI-Virgin Records (India) in 2008 to release their second full length album Easy. Instead of conventional studio recording, the band began work on the album by recording the tracks in a make-shift studio set up by them in a village in Uttaranchal, a state in the Himalayas, during September 2006. The album took four years to be produced with the band bringing in mixing engineer and co-producer Miti Adhikari (BBC London) and Grammy Award winning mastering engineer Richard Dodd.
The album was initially released on digital format through iTunes

ITunes

iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....

 and Amazon.com

Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...

 in early-January 2011 followed by physical CD format on 26 January 2011. The album immediately received favourable reviews by critics with The Times of India

The Times of India

The Times of India is an Indian English-language daily newspaper. TOI has the largest circulation among all English-language newspaper in the world, across all formats . It is owned and managed by Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd...

calling it "by far, one of the most brilliant works from an Indian rock act."
The album artwork for Easy was done by award-winning art director Abhishek Dey who has been a regular with the band having designed the layouts for the band's first album.

Discography

• The Story Begins... (EP) (2003) The Middle Earth Company
• Home (2006) The Middle Earth Company
• Easy (2011) EMI-Virgin Records (India)

Etymology

The name Menwhopause was borrowed from Anup's quiz team in college that went by the same name. The band has always maintained that the pun was actually unintentional and they were more interested in the word pause being part of the band's name. In recent interviews, the band has been quoted giving different origins of the name. Some of them include a tyre company in Brazil, tattooed fans and an attribution to Randeep's mother.