Accept no substitutes. That’s what they say. Yes and they definitely do live up to those words. With young fresh talent reaching up its climax on a rainy night and with heart pumping music and the dreamy night sky lighting mesmerizing the audience, started off the finals of the 10th season of TNL Onstage.
It was the most anticipated night of many of those who were present over there at the SLECC on the 31st of October to witness the most happening and biggest musical competition and concert of the year. For the 10th consecutive year, TNL Onstage 2009 was organized with the intention of bringing up those hidden talents of Sri Lankans in both playing as a band and singing individually to prove that not even Green Day or Nickelback or Metallica can match up for the talent of Sri Lankans.
The night was full of amazing music and new talents. People cheering for each other, some screaming, and ofcourse, some dying to be the next rock star of the country with all the head banging 
Starting off with the show was the Onstage season 9 runners up, The Rebels doing the sound check which actually gave a huge kick for the audience. The stage set up of Onstage 2009 was indeed very attractive and very colorful and with the night sky lighting system which was running all around SLECC, it was just magical.
TNL Onstage 2009 finals comprised of 7 soloists and 6 bands. The soloists are namely, Dushantha, Shenali, Sanjeewa, Sameera, Nadisha, Hiran and Kavisha. The bands are namely, Triton, Five Minutes Apart, Willie’s Jeep, Helter Skelter, Alchemy and Gravity. All were equally perfect as ever making it harder and harder for the judges to decide to whom the title should go out to.
It was pretty amazing to see how specially the members of each of the bands were dressed up and how stunning their performances were. The music made the people dance off and bang their heads and for some to get carried away with all the romantic songs sung. At some points, the performers seemed as if they were talented actors as well. With the lead singer of Five Minutes Apart running all around the hall and making the famous “audience jump” they didn’t make it look like another stereo type performance in a stereo type rock concert. Triton was having a make up put up on their faces making them look like somewhat the Zombie type. Helter Skelter lead singer dressing up like a Harley Davidson and many more while the soloists too made their own fashion statements to make their performance more attractive. The show was held in two rounds for the bands and one round for the soloists. In the first round for the bands, they had to play their music in full in whatever their genre was while the second round was an acoustic round. So this indeed created a lot of variety. Many originals were played and sung which really made all of us wonder why didn’t they ever go on Billboard in the first place? The soloists came up with superb performances with Kavisha showing up the signs of a Chris Brown and Nadisha with all her love songs, more like a better version of Taylor Swift or Eva Cassidy. As TNL says, “It’s a music free spirited enough to inspire Mika to jump around in his underwear! It’s a music as fearlessly ambitious and wildly memorable as ‘teenage dreams in a teenage circus.”
Then came another one of the most anticipating performances which the whole audience was waiting for, Nemesis, Onstage season 9 winners. With a kick ass performance by Nemesis people practically had their eyes glued to the stage. After the guest performance by Nemesis, came the next big guest performance of Onstage 2009, Civilization One featuring Chithral Somapala who is most considered as the rock god of Sri Lanka. A performance which everyone at Onstage was looking forward to. With playing off a couple of their own originals and that song which is in the minds of all the people, “Nadee Ganga” Chithral along with Civilization One made the whole night as memorable as ever.
Slowly the night was coming to an end without the notice of anyone. Nobody actually realized that they have almost spent 8 hours over there listening to the music and finally it was time to mention the winners. For some it was hear breaking, while for some, it was an over joy. Starting off with the runners up of the soloists, it was Nadisha, and the winner was Sameera. The runners up for the bands category was Helter Skelter and the winners were Five Minutes Apart. The Sprite song competition winner was Five Minutes Apart with their song “Capture the moment, feel the rush” while the best original was given out to Alchemy and the VOA’s best musician award for awarded to Darren Johnson who is the drummer of Five Minutes Apart.
Also at TNL Onstage 2009, Criminal Records, the record label of TNL was released with the album “Works of Chitral Somapala”
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