Popular music studio to clamp down on parties and antisocial behaviour

A firm running popular music studios in Bristol will soon hire security staff and ban musicians from taking alcohol inside.

Pirate Studios in Lawrence Hill will instead serve a small range of drinks from a bar inside the building, in an effort to stop people from hosting parties there.

Security staff will check the names of people entering the building against bookings, and stop anybody from bringing in their own alcohol. They will also clamp down on musicians smoking cannabis outside the building, the company’s boss told a licensing hearing.

Pirate Studios was granted a licence by Bristol City Council on Thursday, September 21. The licence allows the studios to sell alcohol until 2am on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays and midnight the rest of the week.

The studios are open throughout the night but no alcohol would be allowed after these times. Pirate began as a business in Bristol, with their first studio in Lawrence Hill.

The company now has several studios across the country, as well as some in Germany, Ireland and the US.

Speaking at the licensing hearing, David Borrie, chief executive of Pirate Studios, said: “Up until 2019 we were operating as a 24-hour, primarily self-service studios.

When the pandemic kicked in, what started to happen was pubs and clubs were closed and restricted, and at some point our studios opened before pubs and clubs did.

“Because there was space to make music, they had the ability to play music as well. People started to use the studios as places to party, somewhere to have a few drinks and listen to music.

“This was unfortunately accentuated by social media platforms such as TikTok.”

Pirate has introduced several security measures, such as AI monitoring of CCTV, hiring more staff to monitor CCTV, and taking ID documents for people booking studios.

The latest measure is to start employing door staff and banning anybody from taking alcohol inside. Instead, a bar inside the building will serve a small range of canned alcoholic drinks.

Borrie said: “When people are drunk they don’t handle the equipment appropriately, and that ends up in very expensive repairs which are very hard to pass onto the customer who’s damaged it.

Unfortunately we can’t ban alcohol altogether because having a can of beer with your practice session is synonymous with those kinds of sessions.”

He added that security staff would also prevent musicians from smoking cannabis in the car park outside the studios, something which neighbours have previously complained about.

The company has to apply for a premises licence for each of its studios across the country, to be able to sell alcohol on site. Sales of strings, guitar picks and drumsticks are also planned.

Alex Seabrook is a local democracy reporter.

Main photo: Pirate Studios

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