Hope of the States - Future in doubt?

Dear all,

As you have all heard hope of the states is no longer.
Firstly I would like to apologise for the elapsed time between this information becoming public and any personal announcement to yourselves. However we had no idea that a passing comment between friends/associates etc would fly so far into the public domain so please, don't believe all ye read and give us a bit more credit.
This time has also been spent pulling ourselves together, working out what to say, reassuring loved ones, dealing with legalities and other ignored items on the agenda, and generally fixing ouselves up to bade ye farewell. Sometimes life is more important than silly rawkanroll bands....not often but sometimes! And you all know that a cockrock stage announcement is not really our way!
Secondly I want to thank you all for all yr support for the last few years. As you all know we have endured the proverbial rollercoaster since we started and for many of the most incredible moments of my life I have a lot of you to thank. We have always been so grateful, touched and honoured that people cared about our little band and many of yr recent messages have brought a fair few giggles, tears, screams and the odd shiver to me. To know that maybe we were one of "those" bands to someone, anyone, is genuinely the highest praise I could ever wish for. Thats why we started this band, and thats why we finished it. We walk away from this as friends and we walk away with dignity. When we are all old miserable granddads we can all tell our grandkids about that band we were in, with pride because we feel we did it right. We have nothing to be ashamed of and I wonder whether many bands can say the same thing.
Finally, though I appreciate the lack of information encourages this sort of thing, wild accusations, assumptions, and conjecture help none of us. This message is inevitably (sic) incomplete/vague/a little random but it's what I have, it's the truth and I truly hope the spirit of it and the genuine attempt at an honest communique is clear and can maybe calm a little of the winternet nonsense. (ie I did not speak to anyone from BBC6 music on any topic whatsoever etc etc etc)
Anyway, I hope we have left a little community in our troubled wake that can carry on together in whatever way ye all fancy. That's all anything we ever did was about.
Take care and humble heartdepth thank yous

Sam
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I guess that many of you already know, but Hope Of The States have decided it is the right time for us to go our seperate ways. I guess that many of you would like to hear reasons behind our decision, and I guess people expect tales of infighting or external forces weighing heavy upon us...... unfortunately such drama has eluded us. I guess we just decided it was the right time- time for us to walk away with our heads held high and the fire still in our eyes.
I would like to start by saying sorry that I have not been able to reply to any of your comments or answer any of your questions since this news accidentally leaked last weekend. We had never wanted our last shows to be thought of as such, we merely wanted to put our all into them as we had with every other thing we ever did. All of the songs we wrote and played will always have a special place within me, and I have to say that the thought of playing the songs for the very last time on Sunday brought many a sickly feeling to our stomachs and many tears to our eyes. We will always have the permanent marks on our arms as reminders of these very special times in our lives. I could list all of the amazing experiences I have had but there is not enough space to write them all. Most of all we leave behind two albums that we hope people will continue to love, and that other people will continue to discover.
I would like to thank every single one of you that I have met, and very single person who supported us through the highest and lowest points of our lives. We have been through alot and I am glad that you people were there with us all the way- I will be forever grateful. Reading the comments left by all of you on these pages has left me dumbstruck... I am just so glad that what we worked so hard on and believed in so deeply has had such an effect on so many people. We really did create our own little community didn't we!

I bid you all farewell for now with a teary eye and a smile on my face....Thankyou one and all

Simon
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Mr Rivers wrote:

Here's Sts'ikel from their fan site

*SNIP*