Tattoo Colour

Khon Kaen to Smallroom

The four members of Tattoo Colour went to school together at Khon Kaen Wittayayon in the north-east of Thailand, where they played as I-Scream 479 and sold home-made albums to classmates. They stayed together through Khon Kaen University, and it was there that they entered a competition run by the drinks brand Happy with the Bangkok label Smallroom on the judging panel. They won, and in 2003 they signed with Smallroom under a new name.

The line-up has not changed since. Harin Suthamjaras, known as Dim, sings lead. Ruzz Pikatpairee plays guitar and shares the vocals. Ekachai Chotirungrot, known as Tonk, is the drummer, and Thanabordee Theerapongpakdee, known as Jump, plays bass. All four sing, which is why the harmonies on the records are so thick.

Their debut album Hong Ser arrived in 2006 and gave them the single Fah, still the song most people reach for when they describe the band. Smallroom's own description of the group is variety pop, a term that covers the way the records move between guitar pop, brass-led soul, ballads and comic novelty songs without settling anywhere for long. Isaan, the region they come from, keeps surfacing in the writing: the hook of the 2026 single Single Coil is partly in the Isaan language.

Seven albums in twenty years

The rate of release has been steady rather than hurried. Hong Ser was followed by Chut Thi 8 Jong Pro in 2008 and Trong Naeo Naeo in 2010. Pop Dad, released in 2014, is the record that turned a well-liked indie act into an arena draw, and the band later put out a live companion to it, The Rest of the Songs from Pop Dad, in 2017. Sat Jing came out the same year.

Ruean Phae Chut Thi 6 followed in 2022, alongside a collection called My Secret Folder and a live recording of their concerts with the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra at Prince Mahidol Hall. An EP, Bao Dai Bao, appeared in 2024. The seventh studio album, Fitness Pop, is the 2026 release, and the label has been rolling it out a single at a time. Good Luck to The Both of Us came first. Single Coil, the fourth single, is a song about being alone and waiting, with a video built around electrical plugs left unplugged, and it credits Ruzz under his solo name Ruzzy.

The band's YouTube channel passed 300,000 subscribers on 23 July 2024. Ruzz was named Guitar Man of the Year at the Guitar Mag Awards in 2021, and the band took Best Band of the Year at the same awards in 2024. When promoters list the songs a crowd will be waiting for, the three that always appear are Kha Moo, Fah and Cinderella.

Kan La Krang: a concert series that grew each time

Tattoo Colour's own headline concerts run under the series title Kan La Krang, which translates roughly as once upon a time, and each edition is numbered. Before the series took over, the band's Bangkok calendar reads like a history of the city's mid-sized rooms: a Band on the Run show against Crescendo at GMM Live House on 19 September 2015, the Cat Expo 3D festival in February 2017, a Soundbox double bill with Polycat at GMM Live House on 20 May 2017, and two nights with the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra at Mahidol Sitthakarn Auditorium in Salaya on 23 and 24 February 2018.

Kan La Krang 5, staged as Tattoo Colour Fest at Impact Arena in Muang Thong Thani on 3 and 4 February 2024, is the show that set the current benchmark. The Standard's report, published on 6 February 2024, counted 64 songs across more than four hours, played on a stage built to be watched from all 360 degrees. Guests included the rappers Twopee and F.Hero, the veteran comic musician Ed 7 Wee, the actor and singer Bright Vachirawit, and TangBadVoice. The Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra joined for a section of orchestral arrangements, the band's first work with them in six years. The paper framed it as the grandest concert of the band's eighteenth year and wondered aloud where a sixth edition could possibly go.

The band's followers have a name, chao nua, which the Thai press uses as a matter of course. It comes from a word for the mingled, savoury quality of a good dish, and it has stuck to the crowd as much as the music.

2026: Fitness Pop and the stadium

Time Out Bangkok reported on 25 June 2026 that the answer to that question was Rajamangala National Stadium, the biggest sports ground in the country. The sixth edition, billed as Kan La Krang 6 Tattoo Stadium, is set for Saturday 19 December 2026. The band had promised, at a Halloween-themed mini concert at Union Hall the previous year, that the next big show would be larger than anything before it. Time Out noted that the stadium has hosted plenty of touring acts but rarely a home-grown pop band at this scale.

Khaosod and other Thai outlets confirmed in August 2026 that it is the band's first stadium show, carries the sponsor billing Leo Presents, and went on sale at 13:00 on Saturday 29 August 2026 through Eventpass. A ticket map circulated at the same time put prices between 1,500 and 3,500 baht. The show is promoted as a run through hits and stories from more than twenty years of the band's career, and Smallroom has said the ground can take more than 60,000 people.

The label has been explicit that 2026 is meant to be the band's year: new singles through the spring and summer, the full Fitness Pop album, and the stadium at the end of it. Songkick lists 7,021 people tracking the band for concert alerts, and its past-events page records the last overseas dates as Joe's in Chicago on 11 August 2019 and the O2 Forum Kentish Town in London on 27 January 2018.

What a show is like now

The club dates in 2026 have been the counterweight to the stadium. On Wednesday 27 May 2026 the band played Status Ratchayothin in the Chatuchak district of Bangkok, a table-seated nightclub, in a slot running from 22:00 to 01:00 and sold as a greatest-hits run through Kha Moo, Fah and Cinderella in close quarters. A further Bangkok booking at Melt Livehouse on Rama 4 was listed through Ticketmelon in June 2026. The one date outside Thailand on the books is Friday 25 September 2026 at 170 Russell in Melbourne, a mid-sized standing room in the city centre, with a 22:00 start. The Melbourne show is the first time the band has played abroad since 2019.

What separates the club nights from the arena is length rather than energy. The 2024 Impact Arena shows ran past four hours because the band treats a headline set as a survey of the whole catalogue, with the orchestra and guest rappers slotted into the middle rather than bolted on at the end. In a club the same songs arrive in a three-hour window with no guests and no strings, and the four-part vocal is the whole production. The December stadium show has not yet been reviewed, and the band has not published a setlist or a support bill for it. What has been announced is the venue, the date, the price and the promise that it covers twenty years.