Florence and the Machine Tickets

Singer-songwriter Florence Welch was born in London to an academic family; her mother was a university professor and her grandfather a former deputy editor of the Daily Telegraph. She performed well at school but knew from an early age that her career lay in writing and performing. As a teenager, she collaborated with her friend, Isabella Summers, and the duo performed as Florence Robot/Isa Machine, later shortened to Florence And The Machine, and today the band contains more members (still including Summers), and is known as simply “The Machine”.

Prior to recording as Florence + The Machine, Welch made music with Ashok, but the collaboration was short-lived, and instead Welch returned to her own band, and their debut album, Lungs, was released in 2009. They'd received a lot of attention and promotion through the BBC Introducing.... scheme, and been championed by radio, with the result that Lungs went straight to No.1 in the UK album charts and also did well in the States. A year earlier, the single, “Kiss With A Fist”, had featured on many film and TV series soundtracks, and when their follow-up single “Dog Days Are Gone” appeared in the hit US teen drama, Gossip Girl, interest in the band grew quickly.  Heavily influenced by acts such as Kate Bush and Siouxsie Sioux, the band's music and image is best described as 'Romantic Rock'.

“Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)” was the third single off the album, and was quickly followed by a cover of Candi Staton's disco classic “You've Got The Love”, which was also adapted into a mash-up with Dizzee Rascal, named “You've Got The Dirtee Love”, and was performed at the 2010 BRIT Awards. More singles followed, including “Cosmic Love”; another track which went on to feature heavily in US TV shows, most notably Grey's Anatomy and The Vampire Diaries. The band itself made a guest appearance in Gossip Girl in February 2011, and their track, “Heavy In Your Arms” was written for the soundtrack of the film The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, in 2010.

Also in 2010, Welch was asked to record the band's second album, Ceremonials, in Los Angeles, but instead she returned to the UK to do it in London, combining work on the record with extensive touring of the US, promoting Lungs. Work on Ceremonials was eventually completed in the summer of 2011, the lead single, “What The Water Gave Me” coming out in August of the same year, with the album itself debuting in October 2011, and going straight to No.1 in the UK, No.6 in the US.

A world tour to promote Ceremonials was announced in Autumn 2011, beginning in the US and taking in the UK, Europe, South America, Australia and Asia through 2012, with support acts including Laura Marling, The Horrors and Spector.