Thirty years after writing it, Leicester band's song is getting radio airplay | Leicestershire Live

Nippy Sweetie was first formed in the mid-1990s - but three decades later they are back together and releasing an EP

A woman who lives in Leicester is showing that there is no time limit to achieving your childhood dreams.

After a 30-year pause, a band Raina Wilson started and stopped at university in the mid-1990s released its first EP on Boxing Day and one of its tracks has already been picked up as "Introducing track of the day".

It is being played on BBC East Midlands every day this week, with BBC Introducing presenter Dean Jackson telling his audience he has been playing the music at home too.

Raina and David Baird got together at Bournemouth University when they discovered a mutual love of jingle-jangle guitars.

Encouraged by friends, they did a demo of five songs in a university studio, and Nippy Sweetie’s second gig saw them support Britpop upstarts Menswear.

“But then life happened. We graduated, I returned home to Girvan and David to Horsham,” said Raina. “We’d see each other at friends’ weddings and talk about doing music again but it just didn’t happen. Next thing I know it’s 30 years later.”

Now living in Leicester, Raina came across the Unglamorous and Riotous Collective women’s bands at various gigs around the city.

Inspired by their sparky and punk attitude of “just go and do it”, it ignited something in her to write a new song and she got back in touch with David, now a Hollywood and Venice film festival award-winner, who had also started making music again, this time for short movies with his Hygge Rocks brand.

Sending him a phone recording of the new song, David “fed it into his nifty music machine-computery-thing and then we had different tracks of my guitar, but with glorious, swelling string sections too,” said Raina, who works for Reach plc, which owns Leicestershire Live.

Just as some music tastes had moved on, so had technology, and David was able to go back to that old cassette demo and, using those recordings, he reimagined three of their old songs into new tracks for what became their just-released EP, deluded. One of those new old tracks is Do What You Will, which has been well received by BBC Radio Leicester presenters.

The new track, Home, which was the kindle that got the Nippy Sweetie pair fired up about their music again, will be available to hear on January 23 on all streaming platforms, on an eponymous EP that also features the first song Raina wrote when she was 18.

“There were 34 years between the writing of Seagull and Home, but I hope they both still have the 1990s sound we both love," added Raina. "To be fair, the 1990s are definitely back. For example, look at how well the Oasis reunion gigs did, or just the sound of Chappell Roan."

Raina is keen to stress: “You are never too old to realise some of your dreams. OK, I won’t be on Top of the Pops with Harry Styles as a backing dancer, though you may see me in Duffy’s or Firebug in one of his knock-off sparkly jumpsuits, but to be releasing music 30 years late just seems incredible.

"And getting airplay on your local radio station so soon too has blown us away. So I’m very grateful to the Unglamorous women for starting that fire.”