Kilmarnock girl's band in next round of music contest

Mar 20 2009 by Lorraine Waddell, Kilmarnock Standard

A KILMARNOCK girl and her band have won through to the next stage of a top music talent contest.

Lauren Gordon, 20, Paisley-girl Nikki Berrie, 23, and 22-year-old Sarah Alexander from Falkirk – together known as NotSoDiva – were competing in the Live & Unsigned competition on Saturday night.

The talented trio took to the stage in front of a packed Glasgow Royal Concert Hall audience including family and friends.

A stunned Lauren said: “We are so chuffed. It is unbelievable. It was a really high standard of competition.

“We had to be there about 4pm for a sound check and the sound check went awful.

“The show started at 7.45pm. We were second last to perform and it went really well.

“We really pulled it off. Everyone was cheering. There was lots of support for us. It was much better than the sound check.

“The group who won the competition last year performed a few songs while we waited for the results.

“They then called out each band that got through. We are so happy we got through.”

Judges selected the girls as one of the 21 bands who will now go onto the North East and Scotland final of the talent contest which is held in Newcastle on May 2.

Should the girls be successful, they will progress to the grand final which will take place on May 27 at Portsmouth Guildhall.

Strathclyde University music student Lauren added: “We’ve got six weeks now to rehearse like mad. We have to change one of our tracks.

“We performed Rihanna’s Please Don’t Stop The Music and our own track Miss Popular so we think we will change the cover version to something else.”

The group have been growing in popularity and the Kilmarnock girl said that their MySpace hits have rocketed since the weekend.

Depending on their success at the Live & Unsigned finals, the girls also hope to audition for X Factor this year.

We were lucky enough to catch up with the girls last week. You can view a video of them performing and an interview with the girls by clicking the 'videos and pics' link at the top of this page.