Craig Nicholls

Craig Robert Nicholls, (born 31 August 1977) is an Australian musician, best known as the lead singer, songwriter and guitarist of the Australian alternative rock band The Vines, of which he is the only mainstay member. He formed the band in 1994 in Sydney, New South Wales.

Early days

Terry Nicholls, his father, was the guitarist and vocalist in a 1960s group, The Vynes. Later Terry worked as an accountant for Sony Music Australia. Nicholls' older brother is Matt; he has an older sister and a younger sister, Jessica. Terry taught Nicholls to play guitar during childhood. He preferred listening to The Beatles, painting art works and skateboarding. He grew up as "a loner... I never socialized. I stayed at home and listened to music all day. Music became a mystical world".

Nicholls attended Marist College Penshurst until he dropped out of high school during Year 10. He enrolled in an art school for six months to study painting. He supported his ambition to be a musician by working in a fast food service job at a local McDonald's restaurant in South Hurstville. There he met future band mates bass guitarist Patrick Matthews and drummer David Oliffe. To form a quartet named Rishikesh, Nicholls invited his school-mate Ryan Griffiths to join on guitar. Nicholls provided the band's name, Rishikesh, from the city in India where The Beatles had attended an ashram. Reviewing early gigs, newspapers would misprint the name as 'Rishi Chasms', so Nicholls decided to change it to The Vines—a reference to his father's group.