This mix of music, branding, advertising and also working with voiceovers and on-air talent took us from Birmingham to Glasgow and from Leeds to London, creating the branding at networks from Galaxy FM in the north to Capital FM in the south plus the launch of radio renegade Kerrang! 105.2 in the West Midlands.
On The Sly Ltd was born, officially, as a limited company in 2003 with our first official commission: branding the national commercial radio top 40 chart show – Hit 40 UK. We named ourselves On The Sly, as it was something we always did out of hours, under the cover of darkness, moonlighting around our day jobs.
Expanding our remit outside audio branding, we worked with the newly created BBC audio trailers team on marketing campaigns for the BBC’s biggest properties like Doctor Who, Top Gear and Wimbledon.
After a bit of globe trotting, with Chris working in Sydney and Melbourne Australia, we began working with Virgin Radio, and On The Sly moved into studios in London’s West End in t he late 2000s.
This is where our expansion began as we created audio branding for many national and international radio brands in the USA, Thailand, Dubai, Australia and beyond. Having worked with our third director Dan for a decade, he officially joined the OTS team in the early 2010s.
In 2011 we began work on rebranding iHeartMedia’s 104.3 myFM in Los Angeles, a relationship which continues to this day and spring-boarded our transatlantic expansion all over the USA and Canada.
Our signature song branding service, INTROS, launched at myFM in 2012 and now airs on radio stations around the globe.
After many years of producing branding, sound design and music mixing for radio & TV, we began our work in the live experience domain, creating audio for projection mapping at Radio 1’s Big Weekend, also working with Jax Jones on his live tour, and then for January 1st 2020 we were brought on to be the music directors, producing the soundtrack for London’s New Years Eve fireworks.
Now with over a decade of delivering live experience shows, we have composed, curated and designed audio narratives for drone light shows at international product launches like Paramount+, a headline show at Coachella 2023, opening ceremony soundtracks for major sporting events, immersive audio and orchestral scores for events such as COP28 UAE and music production for the pre-show on Coldplay’s World Tour.
In recent years we’ve grown our team into double figures with sound designers, composers, and crew of multi-disciplined players, and opened an office in Manchester as well as a new purpose-built multi-studio audio facility on the south coast in Eastbourne, our original home town.
Our mission continues to be a passion for moving audiences emotionally through the power of sound and, in collaboration with the best in the business, to push the boundaries of what is possible with creative storytelling. With technology developing at such pace, we are constantly excited about the challenge and possibilities our next projects will bring.