THE TOASTERS - 45 YEARS IN SKA TOUR 2026

THE TOASTERS - 45 YEARS IN SKA TOUR 2026

New York City's trailblazing ska band The Toasters are still going strong 45 years after their founding. In 2026 they head out on a major tour spanning North America and Europe. As part of their "45 Years in Ska" tour, they bring their high-energy, brass-driven sound to Germany - the sound that made them legends of the genre.

"When the world is upside down, when loyalties shift, when everyone expects conformity: don't let them grind you down."
That's the motto The Toasters - New York City's most influential ska band - have lived by since their founding in 1981 by Robert "Bucket" Hingley, the band's only constant member, even if those words only appeared in 1997 (in classic pseudo-Latin form) on a Toasters album of the same name.

Born in the old, rougher New York City, The Toasters lit the fuse of the American ska explosion - the US wave of the second generation of ska, which itself originated in the UK and traces back to the birth of the genre in Jamaica a generation earlier.

At the centre of it all was "Bucket" - a British expat working at the Forbidden Planet comic shop who simply missed the 2-Tone ska sounds of home. With virtually no scene in New York, he did what any self-respecting rude boy would do: started his own band. And he hasn't stopped since, regardless of whether ska is "in" at any given moment.

"Whether the mainstream media pays attention to the genre is no measure of how well it's doing," Bucket told Pure Honey. "And the whole 'wave' theory of ska is just annoying - because really it's only one wave that started in 1955, depending on who you ask, right?"

The Toasters' early years were pure DIY. With no label interested in their energetic blend of ska, punk, reggae and new wave, Bucket founded his own...