The Thirst Arrested at Gun Point!?!?!

Late on Saturday night, after playing what is described by lead singer Mensah Cofi-Agyeman as a ‘good’ gig in the humble shires of Stafford, the band were treated to a horrific ordeal in the hands of the police.

After playing a gig in Chase (Cannock), Staffordshire, the band were confronted by a team of armed police, dogs and a helicopter. "We had a good gig. I left the venue and we had to try and jump start the old range rover that we were using, I opened the bonnet and as soon as I did about six police cars came around the corner,” Mensah explains of the incident.

The four piece band – who previously appeared in RWD’s prestigious About To Blow, their manager and their sound engineer had guns held to their heads, were thrown to the ground and later taken to the local police station. All throughout the torment the only explanation was given on Sunday afternoon – when they were released without charge – was that they were being held on suspicion of possessing firearms.

“I looked to my friend and thought that they'd just want to check our insurance documents,” The Thirst frontman added. ”The next thing all chaos erupted, I had red lasers pointed at my chest and on my head. There was a helicopter above us with a spotlight on us. All we could here was shouting. I had a gun being forced on my neck. ‘Get down, get on the ground’, ‘Turn around, put your hands up,’ we were getting all different directions shouted at us, it didn't seem like any of them knew what they were doing. The fact alone that I could feel the policeman shaking through the end of the gun he had to my neck was enough to make me feel very nervous. He had my life in his hands and they were shaking.”

The group’s manager Kingsley Slater just told me, that he “couldn’t believe it, it’s a joke,” and Mensah finished with, “They were apparently waiting outside for two hours for us to finish the gig. Is it reasonable to believe that they thought that our guitar cases and coats were concealing shotguns? We were headlining a gig in Staffordshire! It was like walking into a movie set but it was too real. It's hard to believe that this can still happen today. We were treated like animals, we had no human rights."

Their Twitter, twitter.com/thethirst, sums it up perfectly, "100+Thirst fans 5 machine guns 1shotgun 2fed Dogs 1helicopter 10cop cars 6police cells! What a fukin night!"

Surely the police have better things to do with their time?