Bozeman Magazine

"When Maria Quiles (vocals and guitar) and Rory Cloud (vocals and guitar) met in 2011, both were adrift. Maria had quit her job, given up her San Francisco apartment, and moved in with her uncle in order to pursue music full-time. Rory had left behind a stable schedule of gigs and music lessons in Southern California to seek a new music community elsewhere. He eventually wound up living out of his Toyota Corolla in San Francisco, where he first heard Maria at an open mic. “As a lead guitar player, I could immediately hear myself in her songs.” Rory remembers. They started playing together shortly thereafter, and it was an instant fit. As Rory puts it, “At the time, I had no commitments. I was living on food stamps and busking in Sausalito, and occasionally getting 50 dollars for gigs. It was a challenging transition in my life, but it was very intentional. I wanted the freedom to live a life with music that really spoke to me, and so did Maria. The beauty in that was being untethered to the point where, every single day, I could say the same thing to her: ‘Hey, do you want to do this again tomorrow?' ” Rory and Maria dubbed their new project Quiles & Cloud. They played together nearly every day, and recorded their first album 5 months after they first met. They began touring almost immediately – often for months at a time. The addition of Oscar Westesson (upright bass) in 2013 pushed them even further as songwriters, resulting in darker, more complex, and more dissonant arrangements. As they see it, though, this is only the beginning of a lifelong journey – one of exploring connection, deepening their partnership, and examining the threads that tie us all together."