Roine Stolt

Roine Stolt (born 5 September 1956 in Uppsala) is a Swedish guitarist, vocalist and composer. A major figure in Sweden's rock history, Stolt led two of his country's most successful progressive rock bands: Kaipa in the 1970s and The Flower Kings in the 1990s onward. Witnessing the progressive rock revival of the 1990s, a movement that partly originated from Sweden with bands like Landberk and Änglagård, Roine Stolt was quick to come back to his ancient love. Recruiting ex-Jonas Hellborg drummer Jaime Salazar and ex-Samla Mammas Manna percussionist Hasse Bruniusson, he released The Flower King in mid-August 1994. Stimulated by the warm response, he enlisted brother Michael Stolt (bass, vocals) and longtime friend Tomas Bodin (keyboards) and formed the Flower Kings, which would remain his principal musical project for years to come.

It was an album that tried to unleash the forces of good in the negative, violent, aggressive, competitive music business of today. Reinstate the old hippie ideals, lyrically and musically.

— Roine Stolt on The Flower King, from The Flower Kings website In 1998 he released his second solo album Hydrophonia which reveals major influences by early progressive musicians such as Frank Zappa and Steve Howe among others. In the year 2000 Stolt worked in two different projects, the supergroup Transatlantic, and the re-launch of Kaipa in which he was involved in three albums from 2002–2005. He re-entered the studio with Transatlantic in 2009, for an album release later in the year. In 2013, Stolt and The Flower Kings joined Neal Morse for a co-headlining tour in which the members of both bands collaborated for an encore consisting of Transatlantic songs, as 3 of the 4 members of Transatlantic were present (Roine Stolt, Neal Morse, and Mike Portnoy). In 2015 Stolt joined Steve Hackett's touring band as bassist and guitarist for Hackett's Acolyte to Wolflight with Genesis Revisited Tour. On 24 June 2016, the duo Stolt and Jon Anderson had formed released their debut studio album entitled Invention of Knowledge. In 2017, Stolt co-formed the supergroup The Sea Within.