12 February 2026, Paisley Town Hall
Walking into Paisley Town Hall is like taking a walk back in time when grand buildings like it littered towns and cities across the country. Unlike many though, a considerable refurbishment has given it a modern contemporary feel within a stately framework. It’s an impressive sight.
An impressive setting for an impressive Scottish musical institution. The thirty years of musical recordings may pale in comparison to the building itself, however the quality of output by Mogwai over the past three decades has never waned. If anything, the band are now producing sophisticated, instrumental, music that harnesses all the musical talent across the band.
Mogwai
The soundscape created on stage is loud, with the need for the sole microphone limited to a few verses and choruses and Stuart Braithwaite’s ‘Thank you’ at the end of each song as he takes in the applause from the audience.
While the light show is impressive, all the band appear as dark silhouettes for most of the show, very much in keeping with the relatively low profile they have fostered throughout their career.
Like all their musical output to date, they create something that draws you as if in being in a hypnotic trance. At times a gentle tease, before exploding into a wall of industrial scale sound. If the band can see the crowd through the smoke and neon lights, they’ll face a crowd enraptured by the performance in front of them.
The fundamentals of Mogwai remain, with a pounding drumbeat, heavy basslines, guitars that flicker between steady chord strumming and shredding background fuzz, allied to keyboards and synthesisers which add a texture that hangs it all together.
It’s a style that has gained them much favour in the eyes and ears of film producers with several scores added to their portfolio, The Bombing Of Pan Am 103, Zidane, Before the Flood and more testament to that additional talent at their disposal.
The setlist itself reflects the journey that band and their worldwide fanbase have travelled since the release in 1997 of Ten Rapid and Young Team with a scattering of tracks from each stage of their career to the 2025 release of The Bad Fire.
Old favourites like Mogwai Fear Satan and Ritchie Sacramento sat side by side with God Gets You Back and Pale Vegan Hip Pain, each track savoured by the crowd.
They leave the stage as they had entered. Humble, a mere wave of the arm to acknowledge the crowd. On arrival, expectations would have been set high. Not only did they deliver a set that surpassed those hopes, but they also cemented their place as one of Scotland’s finest musical acts since they first took to the stage all those years ago.
Forest Swords
Producer, composer, DJ. A table full of his equipment. The rear spotlights giving an occasional half glimpse of the technician in front of us. And a fine technician too, an ideal ‘support’ act for Mogwai. Industrial sounds that had early visitors to The Paisley Town Hall, toe tapping and weaving to the heavy beats pounding out of the speakers.
Not a word spoken. Like the headliners, we were treated to a wave and a thank you clap as he left the stage.
During his set though, he demonstrated how one man, with the right technology to play with, can make equally hypnotic music. As entertainment went, it hit the mark and that is all anyone can ask for.
