Adhir Punja Live

Heres whats Adhir Punja has to say " I'm a Mangalorean, born and brought up in Bangalore. Started playing instruments very late. While my peers began learning in middle school, I picked up the drums and guitar when I was in my second year of college, 7 years back.

Throughout my childhood I was heavily influenced by artists like The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Doors, Pearl Jam, Guns N Roses, ACDC, Black Sabbath, Eric Clapton, Dire Straits, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppalin etc, and so after gaining my inspiration from them, I decided to pick up the instruments. 

It was only in my final year of college when things started quickly taking a turn for the good. Formed a Hard Rock band called 'Broken Membrane' for which I drum and sing.

A year later, I was recruited by 'Defyd' to be their drummer, to play progressive rock. In 2014, I formed an old school jazz/blues project called 'Traffic Blues'. Have played several shows across the city and in various other cities with these 3 bands and have achieved and accomplished quite a bit. I will list below some of the noteworthy highlights of my musical career:

1. Launched a full length album with 'Broken Membrane' in 2013. The album is called 'A New Age' and has received many positive reviews from several magazines and websites.
2. Launched an EP with 'Defyd' in 2014. This album also received excellent reviews from all over India as well as Australia, UK, Netherlands and Dubai. 
3. Shortly after launching these albums, I was listed among the top 8 contemporary drummers in the Indian music scene by the late music magazine 'Eight Octaves'.
4. Was interviewed with 3 different bands 3 times on radio 94.3 FM and 91.1FM. Also featured in over 15 news paper articles in different papers. 
4. Played several shows within the city in the best venues and rock fests at The Humming Tree, Take 5, Doff Pub, Opus, Warehouse, Legends of Rock, Indigo Live, Taj Vivanta and many more. 
5. Have headlined rock fests outside Bangalore and have played shows in Pune, Pondicherry, Mangalore, Chennai, Coorg, Madikeri etc. One of the biggest moments of my music career was in 2014 when 'Broken Membrane' were chosen to be the opening act for one of the best bands in the world right now, Karnivool. I got to share stage with my idols in Kolkata in front of close to 2500 people. 
6. Have played many acoustic shows (solo and with bandmates) in and outside Bangalore.
7. Have judged Battle of The Bands at Dayanand Sagar College and recently at Bangalore Institute of Technology. Also judged the instrumental solo competition at Jain College after winning multiple battles and solo competitions. 

The kind of music I play generally varies depending on the crowd present. If the crowd is responsive and energetic, I play a lot of the up tempo retro classics along with the modern stuff which people can sing along to. All crowd favourites of course. I sing mostly English but can also sing Hindi and Kannada whenever the crowd requests come in."