Avenue

Me by Robert Robertson

Robert Robertson (MA 2015) grew up in the Scottish Highlands steeped in all kinds of music, from Scottish traditional to 1960s and modern rock. As lead singer in the band Tide Lines, one of the foremost folk rock bands in the country, Robert performs in both English and Gaelic and is the band’s songwriter. Tide Lines are celebrating their tenth anniversary in 2026.  

If you had to choose one of your songs to recommend to someone, which one would you say is most representative of Tide Lines?  

‘Homeward Bound’ from our last album, because it talks about being brought up in rural parts of the country, as all four of us in the band were, and it's representative of us musically because I think it bridges the gap between being a folk song while having that kind of pop rock element to it.   

What's been your most exciting moment as a performer? 

Although big festival gigs are always amazing, I think your own gigs are the most satisfying because you know that everyone there has bought a ticket to hear you. That’s more of a moment where you think, “Oh, my goodness, this is happening.” Our gigs in the Glasgow Barrowlands stand out – selling out such an iconic venue over three nights last year felt like a real moment in time for us. 

Your background is as a Gaelic singer – how has that tradition shaped you?  

I was brought up just outside Fort William in the Highlands, but my parents were from Stirling, so I didn’t have a Gaelic-speaking background at all. I was always into traditional music and started singing literally as soon as I could talk. Eventually, I would get up at local ceilidhs and sing a Scots song or something, because I didn't have Gaelic yet. But I developed a real interest in learning, because the Gaelic melodies are just so simple and beautiful. Even though my spoken Gaelic isn't really good enough to write a song in the language, it still shapes the music Tide Lines play. I don't think those melodies would come out of my head if I hadn't been brought up around Gaelic. 

How far do you hope to take Tide Lines?   

When you start out, any band's ambition is to be the biggest band on the planet, but that's a dream more than an ambition! You've got to be a bit realistic, but you still always want to be bigger than you currently are. When we started the band in 2016, we actually said at one point that if we were still playing music in ten years' time, we'd be so happy, because it's what we love doing. And here we are, our tenth anniversary this year, and with no sign of stopping.  

What five songs would be on the playlist of your life?  

• ‘Faileas air an Airigh’ – Runrig. A really nice Gaelic song. 

• ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ – Bob Dylan. My dad played it to me, I must have been six and just discovering that the whole folk thing wasn’t just Scottish – it spread all over the world.  

• ‘Thunder Road’ – Bruce Springsteen. My all-time favourite artist.  

• Trying to move up to the present day slightly, I’d go with the Killers – ‘Mr Brightside’. It’s the warm-up track that we play before we go onstage.  

• Finally ‘Seventeen Going Under’ – Sam Fender. A more current song with a great story. 

"I love life on the road. We're about to head off to Europe: Germany, Denmark, Holland, Belgium. We're literally referring to it between the four of us as 'a wee holiday’, because we love what we do.” 

What always goes in your suitcase with you on tour?  

A book. There's a lot of hours spent on the road where you're just having to kill time, so I always have a book handy, and I can read in the back of a van – a lot of people can’t. I like classic literature, from Shakespeare to Hemingway. But I was reading a John Niven book about the music industry last time I was on tour – a brilliant Scottish author.  

There’s a lot of nods to the West End in your album of last year, ‘Glasgow Love Story’ – how did it draw on your own experiences of going to university here? 

It drew pretty much only on those experiences! ‘Cherry Blossom Sunset’ is written about lying in Kelvingrove Park on a sunny afternoon. “Glasgow on a hot night, terracotta twilight” – that's the sunset hitting the red tenements around here and the colour as the sun goes down. Then there's a song called ‘Ashton Lane’, a love song. As I was writing the album, I moved out of the tenement flat that I’d lived in while I was at the Uni, and all those recollections of my time there were in my head.   

Outside of work, how do you enjoy spending your time?   

I used to hate this question, because for a while, genuinely, my only answer was “I go to the pub.” That sounds terrible! But now I do a bit of cooking, running, and I’ve been playing a lot of tennis recently, which I absolutely love. I like watching sport too – football and rugby.  

What’s your most treasured possession?  

An accordion that my grandfather bought for me when I was young – it was the first instrument I ever learned. I take my guitars away quite often and sometimes, on a flight, one might get bashed and need repaired; that never bothers me too much. But if anything happened to my accordion, I'd be devastated.  

And your happiest memory?  

My mum passed away a couple of years ago, so it would be something to do with her – perhaps my graduation, when we had a nice family meal. I’m an only child, so I was really close to my mum.  

Where is your favourite place in the world? 

Lochaber, where I was brought up. Any nice Saturday morning, I would wake up to the sound of my mum shouting, right, we're going to Arisaig today. We'd go out to Camusdarach Beach or camp near Traigh Beach, looking over to the Small Isles and the Isle of Skye. 

How would you spend the perfect day? 

A long lie – I like my bed – then I’d go out for a run, about 5km. I’m not a serious runner, but I think you always feel better for the rest of the day if you do it. Then I’d maybe read for an hour, go out to a sunny beer garden with pals, a nice meal later, then go and hear some live music. 

Robert and his Tide Lines bandmates at the OVO Hydro in Glasgow, where they will play in September. Image: Nathan Dunphy

Memories of Glasgow  

I got accepted at two other unis, but I wasn't interested in them. Basically, I just wanted Glasgow. I had a really inspiring English teacher in high school, who told me even when I was in first year, “You need to go to Glasgow Uni and study English.” Just constantly! In those days, I thought, no, I'm doing music. But gradually I changed my mind.   

People quite often say, oh, you got a degree and you never used it – because I'm not an English teacher, or a journalist. But I use it every day. There's examples in my lyrics: “in fair Verona where the lovers lay their plans...” Obviously that's a Shakespeare reference – a pretty blatant one, but there's more subtle stuff: “What profits a thing for an idle king, who rules half the world on his own?” That's a half-reference to Tennyson. It was just things that I was reading at uni at the time – there’s a lot of Burns too, actually. 

I spent a lot of time socialising, but I think that was part of the learning experience as well. Charles Kennedy, the former rector* – what was his quote? “The University gives you your degree, but the union gives you your education.” I felt I could have got a first if I'd locked myself away in the library in fourth year – but I worked diligently enough to get a 2:1, which still felt like a huge achievement.  

I was a member of both unions, which I don't think you were allowed to be at the time. They're both brilliant in different ways. I heard a lot of good music in the QM. The GUU – I was actually a member of the Debating Society briefly, which again goes back to Charles Kennedy. He was my local MP in Lochaber and was my political hero growing up.  

"I won the gold medal at the Mòd [renowned annual Gaelic festival] when I was at UofG. I got a lot of help from the Gaelic department. Charles Kennedy wrote me a handwritten letter of congratulations from the House of Commons. Then at the bottom it said, 'Hope you're enjoying your time on Gilmorehill campus. Your rector is watching you'."

I used to have two lunches a day when I was at uni. This makes me sound like I wasn’t a poor student, right?! But I had an 11am lecture, a 1pm and a 3pm, so that kind of provided two breaks when there wasn’t really any point going back to my flat. So I’d go to The Crypt under the Wellington Church on University Avenue for a baked potato. Then after my 1pm Gaelic lecture, all the guys would go to the QM for lunch, so I’d just tag along and have whatever the hot lunch there was.

*Charles Kennedy MP (1959–2015) was one of UofG’s most prominent recent alumni, leader of the Liberal Democrat party and Rector of the University from 2008–2014. 

Tide Lines’ fourth album, 'Glasgow Love Story', is available now. The band will play Scotland’s largest venue, the OVO Hydro, on 19 September this year.

This article was first published in April 2026.