The Swifts are Mihali Dellaportas (songwriter, lead singer and guitarist) and Yanni Dellaportas (singer and guitarist), Mick Jankovic (drums and percussion), Daryl McKinlay (bass)

Born and bred on the picturesque holiday destination known as the Mornington Peninsula, 90 minutes out from Melbourne Victoria, the brothers have grown up with a love of music in all it’s forms from classical to garage and everything in between.

Bands such as Radiohead, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, ELO, The Smiths, Mercury Rev, and artists like Mike Oldfield, Eric Clapton and Chris De Burgh all go into the melting pot of influences for The Swifts.

From the late 80’s to the early 90’s they were in and out of groups eventually ending up together in a band called “Afterthought”. After about five years of playing covers in pubs and parties Mihali left the group citing artistic differences and to pursue his studies.  Yanni and the drummer Nick Demopoulos continued with a new bass player and new lead singer. They played live for another twelve months and finally broke up.

Yanni kept playing the guitar and collaborated with longtime friend & keyboardist Murray Jamieson in an outfit called “Only Zeus” they created an instrumental work called ‘Atlantic Tales” ,a fifty minute piece in the style of ‘Enigma.’ In the meantime Yanni got a job in a small private studio helping out another musician friend called Loti, and in return for recording his music was able to use studio time  to engineer & produce  “Atlantic Tales” which Only Zeus released as a limited edition cassette, selling around 150 copies.

At this time Yanni had bought a keyboard and was spending most of his spare time learning how to play and composing electronic instrumental pieces of his own.

He wrote some music for a lyricist friend who was trying to put  a band together, they recorded a demo at Loti’s studio but the band soon fell apart and nothing came of the songs.

Yanni was asked to fill in for a guitarist in a wedding band that his old friend Nick Demopoulos was drumming in. They played every week together for about a year, usually traveling long distances and getting paid very little.

Yanni joined the Salvation Army church in Rosebud with his wife Elizabeth and they soon formed

a band called “Witness” in which they sang contemporary gospel songs.

Yanni and Elizabeth had their first child and so the family began. (they have three now)

Yanni also started producing soundtrack music for local underwater documentaries, mainly of the spearfishing nature.

In the meantime brother Mihali was writing songs, learning the guitar and recording with a friend at his home studio as well as studying horticulture at uni.

The songs were never released and the collaboration came to a close.

After working fulltime as a freelance photographer and graphic designer for about two years Yanni ccepted an invitation to work as a staff photographer for The Independent  a local newspaper,

In an effort to get back in a working band Yanni answered an advertisement in his own local newspaper for a guitarist wanted. After eight months of writing & rehearsing Yanni was unceremoniously dumped from that band for (up to this day) no reason.

Whilst all this was happening however, Yanni was quietly setting up his own recording studio in his home and learning the craft of audio engineering and leaning to play the Mandolin.

So after a couple of weeks of  soul searching over the sacking from this new band, Yanni teamed up with his brother Mihali once more and both decided “Dammit, we’ll make our own CD of our own songs and put it out for the world to hear.” The Swifts were born and after a year of hard work a first CD was also born. And thanks to Adam Dempsey of Dex Audio Mastering for recommending The Swifts to John Bye at Newmarket Music our first CD was on it’s way to being distributed throughout Australia.