Strings Singer Faisal Kapadia On Breaking-Up After 33 Years: “Didn’t Want It to Come To A Point Wher

While the band journey ends here, Bilal and Faisal's individual journeys go on as musicians.

The singer of the iconic rock band Strings, Faisal Kapadia is “celebrating right now”. Last week he announced its break-up after going strong for 33 years, reveals a bittersweet tone of voice as he speaks. It wasn’t an “easy decision” for him, or Bilal Siddiqui — the other half of the original band — to “end the journey”. However, as Faisal puts it, the timing couldn’t have been better. Continue reading to learn more about the latest Bollywood news.

“Bilal and I have had this talk of when do we finish it. Obviously, we might have gone on to play till we were 65-year-olds but then we didn’t really want it to come to a point where it started feeling like a chore, or we started getting bored. We didn’t want it to come to a point where we just didn’t like music anymore,” he adds.

Thus, the decision “to pull the plug” has been taken, not just because the band was concerned about getting to a point where they would quit enjoying making music, but also since they realised that there’s a lot that they had been missing out on, and it was time to go “beyond concerts, music and Strings”.

“Pandemic in a way helped us to get that perspective. It wasn’t as if we didn’t enjoy our tours and concerts. But for the last 30 years that’s all that we did, and we missed all our kids growing up. They are currently about to graduate and go to college, and suddenly we realised there’s this whole other life that we are missing out on,” Faisal Kapadia says.

“The decision to pull the plug, when there is life in it is very hard. I am celebrating at the moment, but a roof which has been there for 33 years has become unexpectedly gone. However, we had to do it someday, and this was the best time I feel, since there’s much to life beyond just concerts, music and Strings,” he says.

The response of individual, ever since the announcement, been “overwhelming and so surprising to see”, Faisal says. Many have signed an online petition asking the band for one last performance.

“Normally the kind of love (we got after announcing the break-up) people get after they die. But we got to see it while we are alive and I am just so thankful and so grateful for all of that. It has been the most overwhelming and the most humbling experience (to see the kind of reaction we got). It was something we did not anticipate at all,” Faisal Kapadia says.

Among the numerous memories during this “journey” that lasted more than three decades that Faisal has, is the quantity of love the band received from throughout the border in India — particularly since they released their third album “Duur” in 2000, after the band’s seven-year hiatus.

“I am still speechless when I think about the kind of love we got from India. They never ever made us feel like we were outsiders or we were from Pakistan. In fact when they learnt that a Pakistani band called Strings was performing, they started making more noise and they started enjoying more!” Faisal Kapadia recalls.

“And then we got to work with some amazing human beings and some great musicians like Hariharan, Indian Ocean, Sona Mohapatra and so many others. It was just amazing, the entire journey,” he recalls.

While the band journey ends here, Bilal and Faisal’s individual journeys go on as musicians.

“I haven’t talked to Bilal honestly about what he is going to do, but I think he wants to explore the world of music production,” Faisal Kapadia says.

“As for me, I am yet to go to that bookstore and pick up the book about my life where I can know what my next chapter is going to be. I am still processing all this as of now, and I have to yet figure out what I want to really do. Of course, I have been doing music for over 40 years now, so I won’t just stop doing that,” he signs off on an open-ended note, just as the band’s timeless songs often do.

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