After a spectacularly unsuccessful career as a session musician and songwriter, local Wallingford guitarist, Tom Crook, decided to get up and sing his own songs himself. After first cutting his teeth at the local Acoustic Ballroom, Tom gathered together some of the area's finer musicians for further gigs and named them the Band Of Hope after the Victorian temperance movement. With support from Big Potato Records and the Big Untidy collective, the band have played up and down the Thames Valley supporting such acts as Stornoway and Danny & The Champions Of The World. Thanks to an invite from Truck Records, they played this years Wood Festival at nearby Braziers Park and their songs have been aired by Tom Robinson on his BBC 6Music radio show and Tim Bearder at BBC Radio Oxford.

For the BunkFest, the band will feature avant-garde composer Paul Whitty on harmonium, the Ballroom's own Ben Smith on fiddle, Drew Milloy playing double bass, Colin Guilford on drums and Oxfordshire's youngest, if not only, female pedal-steel guitarist, Ellie Hughes.

(Saturday afternoon concert Portcullis Club, Saturday Boat Trip, Sunday George Hotel Courtyard)