The Rosadocs

Built one Sheffield room at a time

The Rosadocs formed in Sheffield in 2017 around frontman and rhythm guitarist Keelan Graney, with Joe Egan on lead guitar, Adam Sleight on bass and Callum Raynor on drums. Keyboardist Myles Henderson came later and by an accident of billing: he opened for the band as a solo artist at The Leadmill in 2021, got on with them, and ended up in the group.

Their method was unglamorous and entirely local. Rather than chase a London showcase, they worked through nearly every venue in Sheffield until each one held a crowd that knew the songs. The first headline slot was at the Rocking Chair, a room that has since closed. The Leadmill became a marker they kept returning to — five shows there in total, including one of the venue's last before it shut, which Graney has described as full circle.

The same stair-climbing shows up in their festival record. They went to Tramlines as paying punters, then played the Fringe, then the Library Stage three times, then the Leadmill Stage. Along the way they opened for The Sherlocks and the Pigeon Detectives, played the Isle of Wight Festival and Tramlines in 2023, and headlined the ballroom at Sheffield City Hall in November 2023.

Singles first, then a record that said something

The catalogue grew a track at a time rather than in albums. "At Your Door" arrived in May 2023 and remains the song that opens almost every set — a wide chorus built to be sung back rather than listened to. "Stand Alone" followed in 2024, recorded at Chairworks Studio and mastered by Peter Maher.

The EP The City's No Good for Reflection came out on 20 June 2025 and is still the clearest statement of what the band does. Five tracks — "Bittersweet", "Hopeless Optimist", the acoustic "Cross To Bear", "The Ladder" and "In The Storm" — circle the same subject: the squeeze of fast modern life as seen, in Graney's framing, from the perspective of a couple of lads in their mid-twenties. It is writing about rent, drift and the distance that opens up between friends, delivered at a volume that gets a room moving anyway.

"Cross To Bear" has become the hinge of the live set for the same reason it works on record: Graney has said it still connects in exactly the way they intended, which is a modest claim and a rare one. Deeper cuts — "No. 54", "Settle Down", "Concrete", "Towards The Sun" and "Run Away Instead" — carry as much weight with the audience as anything formally released. By the band's own count, "No. 54" and "Run Away Instead" have each passed a hundred live performances.

2026, the year the maths changed

The current run started with a support tour for The Enemy early in 2026, followed by the band's first headline tour, which took in most major UK cities. The pivot point came on 24 April 2026 at Sheffield's Octagon Centre: a near-capacity 1,500-strong hometown crowd, the biggest headline show of their career by a wide margin, with Newcastle five-piece Leazes opening.

Tramlines on 26 July 2026 delivered the other milestone. The band played Hillsborough Park's Sarah Nulty Main Stage from 14:45 to 15:15, directly before Reverend and the Makers, finishing a progression through the festival's stages that had taken years. "We've done every step to get to the main stage," as they put it at the time.

A heavy festival summer followed: Y Not on 1 August, Deva Fest at Cholmondeley Castle on 7 August, Pencoose in Cornwall on 22 August, The Big Feastival at Alex James's farm on 30 August and Lindisfarne at Beal Farm on 5 September, alongside Truck, Kendal Calling and Splendour.

Then, announced on 8 October 2026, the record deal: Tri-Tone/Republic of Music, with a debut album in development and no title or date yet attached. Graney's reaction to the whole stretch was characteristically flat: "This year has probably been the first time we've properly stopped and looked around and thought, 'this is actually happening'."

The autumn run

The tour that carries the album announcement runs across October and November 2026 and mixes headline club shows with arena-sized support work. It opens at The Horn in St Albans on 14 October, then three nights opening for Milburn — O2 Academy Islington on 15 October, Leeds Academy on 17 October and the O2 Ritz in Manchester on 29 October — with their own headline dates at the Social in Hull on 22 October and Thekla in Bristol on 23 October in between.

November is the band's own: two consecutive nights at Crookes Social Club in Sheffield on 4 and 5 November, The Crescent in York on 6 November, The Drill in Lincoln on 11 November, The Forum in Tunbridge Wells on 14 November, the Trades Club in Hebden Bridge on 18 November, O2 Institute 2 in Birmingham on 19 November, Lemon Street Social Club in Tyldesley on 20 November, The Brickyard in Carlisle on 27 November and Cabaret Voltaire in Edinburgh on 28 November.

Support across the headline dates comes from Leazes, Harriet Rose and Shambolics. The venue sizes are deliberate — most of these rooms are smaller than the Octagon they filled in April, which suggests a band spreading the map rather than cashing in the hometown number.

What happens on stage

The set has a fixed architecture that has held since early 2026. "At Your Door" opens, "Bittersweet" follows, and "Settle Down" goes in early — a song they make a point of playing in every new town. The Octagon version ran to fourteen songs, taking in "The Ladder", "In The Storm", "No. 54", "Stand Alone", "Too Much In Time", "Paint Me A Picture", "What You're Supposed to Be" and "Concrete", before "Towards The Sun" and "Run Away Instead" closed it out.

The one engineered drop in the middle is "Cross To Bear": three of the five walk off and the remaining pair play it as a duo, which resets the room before the back half. Graney goes into the crowd during the closer. Confetti cannons fire on the last chorus — about the only piece of production the show leans on.

Reviewers have tended to write about the flow rather than individual songs. Backseat Mafia's account of the Octagon described a set that rolls forwards inexorably and carries the crowd with it, and called the night a band meeting their moment head-on with a city ready to carry them there. The crowd detail in that review is more telling than the verdict: voices louder than the speakers in places, people on shoulders, every word sung back. At smaller shows the same thing happens at a different scale — the July 2025 EP launch at The Garrison in Barnsley was a capacity room, with a pre-show signing session and one regular marking his fiftieth Rosadocs gig.