For more than 20 years of existence, the Tin Sontsya group has undergone numerous replacements of musicians. And only frontman Sergey Vasilyuk remained a constant member of the heavy folk metal band. The composition "Kozaki" was heard by millions of boxing fans when Oleksandr Usyk entered the ring. Before the Ukrainian national football team entered the field at Euro 2016, a song performed by Vasilyuk also sounded.
The first steps in the work
Sergei was born in Kyiv and became interested in music at school. He was a constant soloist at all extracurricular activities. In high school, however, he switched his attention to ecology, becoming the initiator of the cleansing of small rivers and parks in Kyiv and Vasilkov.
And in the summer of 1999, together with his cousin Alexei Vasilyuk, they decided to create Tin Sontsya. The name of the rock band is due to the solar eclipse that occurred in August of that year. The brothers recorded the song "Winter" together. Soon, Sergei's classmate Andrey Bezrebry joined them.
The work went on at an accelerated pace, and two years later the album "Svyatist vіri" was released. Beginning musicians will remember their first concert in Zhytomyr at the festival "New Dawn of the Dawn" for a long time.
Unfortunately, Andrey decided to work on a solo project, and Sergey radically changed the concept, taking the direction of heavy-folk with progressive elements. It was the brothers' own know-how, which was called "Cossack rock" in musical circles.
The first successes of Tin Sontsya
In those years, most of the Kyiv metal bands sang either in Russian or in English, and "Tin Sontsya" decided to stand out from the crowd in the Ukrainian language. At first everything went fine. The composition of the team has expanded due to guitarists Andrey Savchuk and Anatoly Zinevich. Later, drummer Pyotr Radchenko joined. But then everyone fled, and Sergei had to put together a team again.
In 2003, guitarists Vladimir Matsyuk and Andrei Khavruk, as well as drummer Konstantin Naumenko, already played in the composition of "Tinі Sontsya". It was with these musicians that Sergei managed to develop a large concert program, with which they performed at the KPI.
The rock band received its first competitive award by performing at the Podikh festival. Their singles began to play on Radio Rocks. It's a shame that on this rise, Naumenko left, deciding to organize his own Sunrise project.
Recognition and expansion of the composition
The victorious procession of "Tinі Sontsya" dates back to 2005, when the guys released the disc "Over the Wild Field". The longest composition on it, "The Song of Chugaistr", was dedicated to the Chernobyl disaster using ancient pagan mythology. The music was not written by Vasilyuk himself, as was usual. This is a cover version of the hit by Belarusian rockers from Gods Tower.
In the same year, the demo-album "Beyond the boundary" appeared, which united art-rock compositions in a mythological style. To add folk sounds, bandurist Ivan Luzan and violinist Natalya Korchinskaya were taken into the group. Natasha did not last long in Tinі Sontsya. But Sonya Rogatskaya, who replaced her, became a real decoration of the team.
Sergey came up with the idea to combine male vocals with female ones. Together with Natalia Danyuk, they recorded the singles "Daremno" and "Field". They became real hits. The musicians continued the theme of paganism and Cossacks in the album "Polum'yana Ruta", released in 2007. Fans, which every day became more and more, accepted her with a bang.
Festivals and crises
The crisis of 2008 also affected the metal band. Vasilyuk and Momot did not agree in character. I decided to take up classical music as a violinist. Since they couldn't find a replacement for Sonya, they had to go back to a more metallic sound.
Since 2009, Sergei Vasilyuk has also widely practiced solo bard performances. In 2010, his first solo album "Skhovane Vision" was released, in support of which he made a tour of the country.
"Tin Sontsya" began to be invited to rock festivals not only in Ukraine, but also in neighboring Belarus and Poland. The first clip appeared only in 2010. They filmed it for the composition "Misyatsyu my".
The next album "Dance of the Heart" (2011) can be called a collection of the best songs over the past decade. Some of the old singles got a new sound here. Critics highly appreciated the work of the folk group.
In 2012, "Tin Sontsya" actively performs at various festivals, constantly undergoing changes in personnel that are difficult for fans to track. The departure of the bright and charismatic Andrei Khavruk especially upset the fans of the rock band.
"Tin Sontsya" lives and prospers
But no life's vicissitudes and troubles can stop work on new singles and albums. "Tin Sontsya" gives concerts for its fans, presents compositions on social networks with constant success, performs at the stadium before the start of the match of the Ukrainian Football Championship "Dynamo" - "Shakhtar".
In 2016, the album "Buremniy Krai" was presented, where a rich guitar sound clearly prevailed. After that, there was a tour of two dozen cities, ending with a concert in Kyiv, at the Sentrum club.
Just before the start of the covid quarantine in January 2020, the rockers released the album On Heavenly Horses, with which they were going to go on an all-Ukrainian tour. But due to the pandemic, it had to be postponed.
