Bond was hailed as the Spice Girls of the classical scene after making a splash with its electronic loaded sound four years ago. Since then Bond has proven that it's far more than just another band with long legs and manufactured by a record company.
None of the sassy, sexy lasses have slept with David Beckham, according to the combo's cellist Gay-Yee Westerhoff, and none of them have any plans to enter the world of popular music. They want to be classy, she said.
All formally educated musicians, Eos (violin), Tania Davis (viola), Haylie Ecker (violin) and Westerhoff have caused quite a stir since their debut single, Victory, reached the top slot in the music charts in 10 countries in 2001 -- an achievement that came as a complete surprise.
"When we're in the recording studio it was the just the four of us and we had no concept of what would happen," said Eos. "We're not that high-profile so we didn't think about it. First it went silver, then gold, then platinum and then it was like `wow.'"
Along with composing numerous original numbers that boast musical influences that include dance, European folk, world beat, salsa, hints of trance and the occasional vocalization, Bond has also successfully produced hugely successful classical crossover reworkings of tunes by a wide range of other artists.
Bond's version of Led Zeppelin's Kashmir took the tune to heights that Jimmy Page and Robert Plant could never have imagined and its revamped working of Monty Norman's well-known James Bond theme saw the tune transformed into a Middle Eastern disco number.
It's Bond's revamping of works by classical composers, however, that has enabled the combo to carve a niche for itself and has led to its now huge worldwide following of fans. Bond has brought Tchaikovsky and Vivaldi into close contact with modern trance and dance and cooked up a genuinely musical recipe for success that is now the envy of some standard classical
musicians.
"I think a lot of the classical musicians we meet are a bit jealous of what we do because we have the freedom to write our own music," Davis said.
As well as being the first female instrumental act to enter the UK pop charts, the combo has posed nude for glossy publicity shots and was the first such act to sell over 3 million records worldwide.
The band's debut album, the striking, electronica and world-beat tinged Born, which was released in 2001, shot straight to number 1 in the Billboard Classical Crossover charts and propelled the band to forefront of a revolution that is currently underway in the world of classical music.
"I think it was odd to begin with as we were the first crossover artists that Decca signed," said Cardiff-born Eos. "But crossover has become a hugely popular genre. Although I don't know exactly how many other crossover acts they have, it could be four or five, [classical crossover] is one of [Decca's] best sellers."
The bubbly, leggy lasses make no bones about the fact they are enjoying their jaunt with super stardom, but the journey to the top has not been without controversy. Banned from the UK's Classical Charts for being too populist, the band's performances at the Classical Brit Awards and a concert at the Royal Albert Hall left some classical purists aghast. One Classical Brits committee member was so outraged at what he perceived to be Bond's sacrilegious reworkings of classical music that he resigned his post in disgust.
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