Poison Party alternative club night returning to KIKI Cambridge

Teacher, musician, events organiser and tattoo artist James Ostler is probably best known around Cambridge as one of the organisers of the Poison Party club nights, alongside his best friend Frazer Robinson.

“I’ve always been interested in music, ever since I was a young lad,” says James, speaking to the Cambridge Independent from his home in Haverhill.

“And I’ve always studied music as well; I went to Cambridge Regional College, I’ve always stayed local, and then I went to Anglia Ruskin and did creative music technology – which is actually an important part of the story because that’s where I met my best mate, Frazer Robinson.

“He and I we absolutely love alternative events and emo nights – rock and metal has always been a huge passion of ours.”

James, whose ‘day job’ is at an alternative provision, where he teaches 14 to 21-year-olds with special educational needs how to make music (he also works as a tattoo artist in the evenings and at weekends at Legacy Tattoo in Haverhill), notes that after attending numerous “club nights and alternative events”, he and Frazer found that they all seemed rather similar.

“They were just playing the same stuff over and over again, every single time,” he recalls, “they weren’t playing any new music, new releases; we noticed that the younger guys weren’t growing up with us – there wasn’t any new blood coming through. So we got our heads together and thought about creating an alternative event.”

He continues: “We wanted to take a bit of a gamble, because we knew the formula worked – people want to go out and they want to listen to Fat Lip by Sum 41 and All the Small Things by Blink-182 – but we wanted to start throwing new music out there.

“We wanted to create an environment that was fully accessible for everybody as well – that was a big thing that we set out to achieve.

“We noticed there were a lot of alternative people, especially in Cambridge, that kind of had nowhere to go…

“They were 18 to 20 and they didn’t feel safe, they didn’t feel like they could fit in in any of the other club nights, so we kind of saw that gap, you could call it, and we came up with Poison Party.”

Frazer Robinson was one of the founders of the popular Strawberries and Creem event and also the Cambridge Club Festival.

“He’s got an extensive knowledge, which I didn’t have,” admits James, “so he’s been an amazing help – and he’s my best mate so we always have a good time.”

The first Poison Party was a nightclub event at Cambridge venue MASH in 2022, which James says went “really well”. The ambitious pair had actually started planning the event before they even had a venue!

“We were excited to do something and we just made a flyer,” explains James, who says that “absolutely everything” is done by the organisers themselves “in house”.

“We put it on Instagram and just said, ‘There’s a party going on, who wants to buy tickets?’ And then we ended up approaching MASH.

“We did that with no money; we had no money going into marketing or promotion – absolutely nothing.

“We just made the poster ourselves on the off-chance really and everyone responded to it amazingly. And I think on the day we had nearly 400 turn up.”

Following the success of their first Poison Party, James and Frazer put on a rooftop party at Revolution in Cambridge.

“That was also a bit of Cambridge history, because nobody had done an alternative event at Revs before,” reveals James.

“Everyone told us it wouldn’t work and they were wrong; it went really well and everyone had a fantastic time.”

James and Frazer have continued to put on their Poison Party nights, including a Christmas party at Rocker’s steak house on Cambridge Leisure Park, and daytime rooftop parties at KIKI Cambridge (formerly Lola Lo).

“We’ve always tried to not be conventional with what we do,” says James, who has an 18-month-old daughter with his fiancée, Belle.

“We always take our opportunities and it always goes pretty well – and I think people respond to that.”

The next Poison Party is on Saturday, 5 July, at KIKI’s. Tickets, priced from £3, are available from fixr.co/event/poison-party-rooftop-ritual-rooftop-terrace-party-tickets-607511851.

Follow Poison Party at facebook.com/poisonpartyuk/ and instagram.com/poisonparty/.