Marc has always been one of very few artists able to comfortably move from one to the other. Mambas shambolic and florid musical shows put Marc in a unique musical place that had one foot in mainstream and the other in the underground. Marc had already branched out with Marc and the Mambas, a loose collective of musicians, and recorded the innovative influential double album Torment and Toreros which Marc has called 'a nervous breakdown put to music'. Soft Cell parted amicably in 1984 to pursue solo projects.

Soft Cell's arrangement of the track has been covered many times by artists as diverse as Marilyn Manson and The Pussy Cat Dolls and has been sampled by a generation of dance producers for artists, notably Rihanna's SOS. Tainted Love broke all records as the track that remained the longest in the US Billboard Top 100 and received a Brit award for best single of that year. They went on to record four albums three in New York including the iconic seminal Non Stop Erotic Cabaret, and had a number of top ten hits including the international classic Tainted Love. Soft Cell were signed to Stevo's underground label Some Bizzare and licensed to Phonogram as part of the new electronic music phenomena. It was at Leeds Poly that he met David Ball and together they formed the internationally successful 'electro duo' Soft Cell in 1979. He began visiting London and worked in Soho during college breaks, documenting his experiences in his early performances Zazu, Twilights and Lowlifes and Glamour in Squalor. At art college he developed his style of mixing experimental performance and cabaret pop with music and film studies. After school he spent five years at art college including a three year Fine Art BA course at Leeds Polytechnic where he left in 1979 with a BA Honors. As a teen he worked in Southport Theatre and on Southport fairground while singing in a local band, covering hits of the day. After an unsettled childhood of moving to Harrogate, Leeds and back to Southport, of illness and learning difficulties he finally left school at 17 with few qualifications. He was born in Southport, a seaside town in the north of England, in 1957. He has sold over 30 million records worldwide and is an icon and influence to a generation of musicians. Is an internationally acclaimed and successful artist.

Marc and the mambas torment and toreros