The beginning spark for the band was lit in 2001/2002. An old friend from army, Arto 'Ake' RÃ¥berg played bass in A-V's rock'n'roll wedding. During the party, Ake let A-V know that he had just bought an upright bass for some serious slapping and his band mates weren't really happy about it (as their music was mainly country based rock'n'roll). A-V had recently knocked heads with his mate Janne Valtonen about forming a rockabilly band with A-V on guitar+microphone and Janne on the drums. Ake was immediately interested in forming the band and slap out his heart with the double bass. A couple rehersals later the plan was ready - to play straight-out rockabilly along with some psychobilly influences. If you wanna go into styles, neobilly was the big idea.
After a couple training sessions A-V realized he sucked at guitaring and singing at the same time and it was agreed to seek out a guitar player with the right attitude for the band. So in the next month the band took a few numbers and made a few calls and even tested some guitarists, but none really hit the mark. During this time A-V was working at a local chemical plant and so was Tuomas Noutio. After a couple weeks Tuomas heard about the band's problems and let A-V know that he had played some guitar, actually for some time now...
One rehersal later Tuomas was invited to join the band. His guitar playing was excellent and he was an amazingly fast learner. Even better he was very interested in psychobilly and it seemed that Ake and A-V had been going in that direction lately as well... The following months proved out to be quite educating for all of us, rehersals kept going at least twice a week.
After a few gigs it became apparent that it might be a good idea to come up with a good name for the band. The ones used for the few beginning gigs just simply didn't work. The next few weeks went by weighting and considering different proposals and ideas, of which, none really seemed to fit in just right. One night after a long rehersal-session the name problem started to really fuck up the atmosphere. "It can't be that hard, to come up with a decent name..." The chat soon turned to the worst band names ever and Gerry & The Pacemakers was named as definately one of the worst ones (taken into account the modern pacemaker's meaning). A friend overheard it and suggested, "Why don't you be the Flatliners then?". Hell, why not. It sounded good. So it was agreed upon, until after an "extensive research" (Ake found a CD in a shop) it became known that a punk/psychobilly band already uses the name. Goddamn, talk about bad luck! Well, let's drop "The" and "R" and add Rockers. That's it, and it has stuck with us..
So another year went by and we started to build up some reputation locally as a band to see. Gigs soon showed that we needed a more experienced drummer and Janne went on to form a heavyrock band of his own. A week passed and Ake's mate Jani Parkkali heard of the opening and immediately joined up. Jani soon proved to be the right choice with his 15 year experience on the cans. His music taste included just about everything but he really found psychobilly to be something worth playing. After a few gigs it was agreed that it was time to take the next step and start recording. Around this time we also threw our first international gigs.
The first recording attempts (Live at Newfield EP) were available for a short time on the bands' webpages and sold on a self-released CD as well. Soon after due to their poor quality, this release was burned and buried. The plans after this were to record a single in a studio for late 2004, but plans changed as we got a record deal to a full 12-song album. Album was recorded in Cotton Studio (Pori, Finland) with Ahti Impola on the desk (he rocks). "Neonlights and Hell Calling" was released as planned on the Axis of Evil label (Empire Music) in the summer of 2005. The album received suprisingly good reviews all around the press and gigs followed.
After tons of gigs of countless bottles of whiskey the band had come up with enough songs to get back to recording and crashed into our the trusty Cotton Studio (in Pori Finland) to record a few new songs. This time recording and mixing was done by Häiriö Piirinen (from Maj Karma) and the end result was 4 songs ready for release. However at this time the band members were too busy with their real lifes to continue recordings further.
A few months passed and rehersals restarted and a few months later were were back at it. New songs started gulping up and gig sets were on fire again. And well.. here we are again...
