F.L.Y. | |
---|---|
Origin | Riga, Latvia |
Genres | Pop music |
Years active | 2002–2005 |
Labels | Platforma Records |
Past members | Mārtiņš Freimanis Lauris Reiniks Yana Kay |
F.L.Y. was a Latvian band created to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest.
At a party following the national finals of the Eurovision Song Contest 2002, Mārtiņš Freimanis came up with an idea for the following year’s contest. In the autumn of 2002, during a golf tournament hosted by Latvijas Televīzija, Mārtiņš Freimanis, Lauris Reiniks and Yana Kay, started discussing such a co-operative venture and so the trio F.L.Y. was born. Their song "Hello from Mars" was written by Mārtiņš Freimanis and Lauris Reiniks and recorded soon after.
Each member of F.L.Y. had further careers. Yana Kay and Lauris Reiniks each released an album, whilst Mārtiņš Freimanis was the lead singer of the band Tumsa, which has three albums to its credit.
Yana Kay, Lauris Reiniks and Mārtiņš Freimanis have all participated separately in the national finals of the Eurovision Song Contest preliminaries, but their big break – the chance to represent Latvia at the Eurovision international finals – came in year 2003, when they participated as a group.
After spending time together promoting their Eurovision Song Contest entry, F.L.Y. started jamming and creating new songs. As a result an album was made and released in Latvia at the beginning of May 2003. They represented Latvia in the Eurovision Song Contest 2003 [1] and got 24th place.
The band broke up in 2005.
On 27 January 2011, Mārtiņš Freimanis died in a hospital in Riga of complications from an influenza A infection. [2]
Claudia Beni is a Croatian pop singer, born in Opatija.
Latvia has participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 24 times since making its debut at the contest in 2000, where the song "My Star" performed by the group Brainstorm finished third. Latvia won the contest in 2002, with the song "I Wanna" by Marie N, defeating Malta by 12 points. Latvia is the second former Soviet country to win the contest. The 2003 contest was held in the Latvian capital Riga. The country achieved its third top 10 result in 2005, when "The War Is Not Over" by Walters and Kazha finished fifth. The Latvian participant broadcaster in the contest is Latvijas Televīzija (LTV), which select its entrant since 2015 with the national selection Supernova.
Latvia participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 2005 with the song "The War Is Not Over" written by Mārtiņš Freimanis. The song was performed by Walters and Kazha. Songwriter Mārtiņš Freimanis represented Latvia in the Eurovision Song Contest 2003 as part of the group F.L.Y. with the song "Hello from Mars" where they placed twenty-fourth in the competition. The Latvian broadcaster Latvijas Televīzija (LTV) organised the national final Eirodziesma 2005 in order to select the Latvian entry for the 2005 contest in Kyiv, Ukraine. Twenty songs were selected to compete in the national final, which consisted of three shows: two semi-finals and a final. In the semi-finals on 29 January and 5 February 2005, five entries were selected to advance from each show: three entries selected based on a public televote and two entries selected by a jury panel. Ten songs ultimately qualified to compete in the final on 26 February 2005 where two rounds of public voting selected "The War Is Not Over" performed by Valters and Kaža as the winner.
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