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“How to Swim are on great form, proving themselves as more than capable of holding their own against the Arcade Fires and Polyphonic Sprees of this world. Whether writing bonkers pop tunes about Genesis P Orridge, slaying all before them with the grin-inducingly danceable Dexys stomp of A Little Orgasm Of Disappointment, or tearing into a cover of David Bowie’s Let’s Dance like a pack of hungry wolves round a giant steak, it all comes across like the sound of a band approaching critical mass, soon to explode and shower us all in artful skulduggery and orchestral mayhem.

Sunday Herald (T In The Park 2006)


"... they play like the devil’s own cabaret band” ...”When they hit full stride, it’s awesome."

Is This Music? (King Tuts, Glasgow) – July 2005


“The night after How To Swim played I dreamed about an army of the lumbering undead smashing up a city. They threw guitars through windows and generally made a nuisance of themselves. How To Swim are the band Tim Burton would create during one of his more inspired moments. The eleven-piece combine a rambling sharpness of style...with a stomping, manic energy. They are the orchestra of the damned” …. “Go and see them now: they’ll be sold out when they’re playing in hell.”

Brazen Magazine (King Tuts, Glasgow) – November 2006


“How to Swim (5/5) are big” … “they produce quite simply a jaw-dropping performance” … “a constantly growing crowd are left stunned by the audacious brilliance of their performance.”

The Skinny (King Tuts, Glasgow) – June 2006


“How To Swim are a genuine delight of well-crafted songs and charismatic lyrics” … “See them now before you have to camp out to get tickets.” (5/5)

The Skinny (Glasgow School Of Art) – 2007


“They soften you up with the sweetest Velvet-y croonings, then drive you off the edge of a cliff into a boiling tar pit where Alex Harvey and Nick Cave are wrestling for control of an orchestral baton. Here be monsters, indeed.”

Andy Bonar, T-Break, 2006


“How To Swim make the best sound of the weekend, filling the tent and clearly persuading everyone with their epic soaring and quirky arrangements.”

The Skinny – Dunstaffnage Music Festival, 2007.


“’Bones’, a sort of work-song come death chant is from a world of noise, where lawnmowers purr and terrible secrets are hidden in the long grass. I have decided to have it played at my funeral. It should make for great theatre.”

Kenneth Hodgart, Greater Glasgow Music Magazine


“Genuinely off-its-head and relentlessly entertaining.”

Lickmag.com (The Littlest Orgasm)


“From the melodious sprawl of ‘A Little Orgasm Of Disappointment’, to the raggedy edges of ‘When The Rain Comes’, the combination of jazzy orchestral workout and frontman Ink Wilson’s sinister inflections makes for a listen near impossible to bracket. And there are never enough bands you can say that about.”

The List (The Littlest Orgasm)


“This delicious mini-album is a ramshackle mass of tantalising trumpets and glorious glockenspiels, cohesively directed by smouldering percussion and jagged riffs” … “A wonderful blend of dementedly twisting country burlesque that froths with fervency and zeal.”

The Skinny (The Littlest Orgasm)


“Radio static heralds the ghost of Alex Harvey, wired up to the mains and wrestling with a saxophonist escaped from the local youth orchestra. ’Logical Man’ is Steve Harley at the Copa Cobana, sashaying down the main drag in Rio. Seek out. 4/5.”

Is This Music? (It Stings When I EP)


"...first track ‘Bones’ is the kind of song one listens to while pouring over the fine details of a world domination mission” … “‘Bones’ will be the song playing in my head when I fall to my knees after a long caustic desert shoot-out but “Feeling Guilty (No. Really)” is the song I want playing when they light the taper at my cremation.”

Rise And Shine (It Stings When I EP)


“… a unique band with a unique sound and will undoubtedly provide a bleeding ray of sunshine to energise even the most disillusioned modern music fan.”

The Glasgow Reviewer (The Littlest Orgasm)


"Did you know that Nick Cave was born with a tail? No, me neither. Not strictly relevant, you may think, but, maybe, just maybe ‘Bones’ by How To Swim is the best song Cave never wrote” ... “This is lounge music for people whose lounges are full of ruined books, ruined records, ruined bodies and a special kind of madness. How To Swim are very possibly the best new band in Scotland."

Tom Leins - Joyzine.co.uk.


“Of the released CDs we receive, 98% are nowhere near this imaginative – Tom Waits would be jealous of the grizzled vocals and voodoo percussion here. Demented genius. 4.5/5”

Planet Sound (It Stings When I EP) - Channel 4 Teletext


“Thoroughly weird, seductively strange” … “a really very interesting take on that thing we call rock and roll.”

The Skinny, 2007


“How to Swim will be huge.”

The List – 2005