Gomez is a British band from Southport. Their first album, Bring It On, won the Mercury Music Prize in 1998.
The genesis of Gomez was the meeting of four friends from Southport. Guitarist and vocalist Ian Ball and drummer Olly Peacock had previously played together in a local heavy metal band Severed. They joined with guitarist Tom Gray, vocalist / keyboardist / bassist Paul Blackburn. Ian Ball met vocalist / guitarist Ben Ottewell from Matlock Bath in Derbyshire at Sheffield University, where they were both studying. The band played their first gig together in late 1996 in Leeds, without a formal name. The band left a sign out for a friend of theirs named Gomez to indicate that this was the site of their first gig. People saw the sign and assumed that the band's name was Gomez - the name stuck.
The band started recording four track demos in a garage in Southport soon after. A bidding war erupted when they sent the demos to recording labels, with the band finally signing with Virgin Records subsidiary Hut in 1997.
Gomez entered the recording studio in 1997 to turn their demos into a full-length album. The band spent the next three months in the studio and touring the United Kingdom with Embrace. Their first single "78 Stone Wobble" was released in March 1998, while their debut album, Bring It On, was released a month later. The album received excellent critical response from both sides of the Atlantic, with Spin Magazine calling it a "damn beautiful album". Sales of the album in the United Kingdom were bolstered when Bring It On won the 1998 Mercury Music Prize for best album, beauting out favorites such as Massive Attack's Mezzanine and the Verve's Urban Hymns. "Get Myself Arrested" and "Whippin' Piccadilly" were later released as singles, while Gomez toured the United States with Eagle Eye Cherry. Despite the critical acclaim, however, Bring It On is thus far the only Gomez album not to find a place on U.S. album charts.