Age: 34

Profession: Singer-songwriter

What else is he up to? Well, composer Colin Reilly approached him with regard to a commision from North West Arts, so Lang has been recording with the Smith Quartet. Plus, he is collaborating with fellow writer John Uriel on a collection of new, less formulaic or pop orientated songs.

Blue-eyed soul contender

The seventh of eight children from a typically matriarchal, Catholic, working class family. Lang grew up absorbing the varying musical tastes of his parents and his older brothers and sisters. "I couldn't afford to buy records myself, so it was a question of listening to whatever was in the house. My Mum and Dad loved Nat King Cole and particularly Matt Monroe. And the others were into Gladys Knight, the Four Tops, the Isley Brothers, all the classic soul stuff. From the earliest age, I would sing along, and I suppose my own style developed as a hybrid of those two different forms."

He left school at 15 with three CSE's, started work in a factory, then completed a four-year apprenticeship in civil engineering carpentry with British Rail. All the while he was singing in local bands - social-club gigs mainly - or performing backing vocals for acts such as the briefly successful Lotus Eaters. Eventually he left his job to concentrate on music full-time, and in 1986 he signed an album deal with Epic, but with one proviso.

"I had to change my surname," he smiles. "I'm actually Thomas Jones, but for obvious reasons they didn't want me using that. For months there was this game going on around Liverpool to rechristen me. Ian McCulloch from Echo & the Bunnymen was very keen on Thomas Lederhosen. By the time it got to Thomas Lampshade, I was feeling desperate. It was my mum who came up with Lang, a shortening of an old family name."

'Scallywag Jaz' , released in 1987, was produced by Pete Smith, fresh from his work on Sting's 'The Dream Of The Blue Turtles' . Elegant, melancholic, enduringly haunting, it has survived the passage of time far better than many more commercially successful projects of that era. The image with which Epic hoped to sell this and a subsequent album, 1990's 'Little Moscow' , travelled less well, however. The laconic and resolutely feet-on-the-ground Lang was presented as some overgroomed neo-crooner. The public was not so sure though, and the partnership came to an end.

Lang is sanguine about this early experience. "What happened, happened, and ultimately I'm responsible for it all. At the time I had no objection to being put into good suits and being presented as a kind of Gitane-smoking, coffee-sipping lounge lizard. The fear lingered, however, that someone would come along and say, 'J'accuse! That's not what you are at all. You're just a Guinness man from Park Road, Toxteth."

Two subsequent independently released albums, and a 'Live In Tokyo' set for Sony Japan, have kept Lang's name on the cognoscenti's lips in the interim, while work with the Smith Quartet and on soundtracks to the films 'Leon The Pig Farmer' and 'Solitaire for Two' have shown a willingness to take his talent in new directions.

The best tracks on 'Versions' , meanwhile, display a confidence that is fully evident on his new and, as yet, unrecorded songs - wonderfully melodic ballads, but also dance-orientated material, composed with a new writing partner, John Uriel. "For me, it's not about wanting to be world-famous and a multimillionaire," he says. "I just aim to keep singing for the rest of my life."

Scallywag Jaz - from Q Magazine (Roger Morton) Thomas Lang has the sort of voice that fascinates all on its own: a succulent, tremulous, smoke-blue tenor that hangs in the air, looking for an excuse to soar or dive. This is at once the main virtue, and principal problem with the freshfaced Liverpudlian's debut album. His co-writer, David Hughes, and the rest of the band, pay due respect to Lang's precocious talent, surrounding the voice with spacious, haunted atmospherics. A piano picks out arcane melodies. Clarinets and saxophones coil round fretless bass lines, and the torchy voice luxuriates in the spotlight.

On Fingers and Thumbs, Scallywag Jaz, and Injury , the result is an eerie, late-night jazziness which turns its nose up at the MOR slush potential of Thomas' voice, but which defies easy assimilation. The presence of his earlier single The Happy Man proves that Lang can, if he wishes, turn out the most sublime linear pop melodies, but here, even the cover version of Me And Mrs Jones seems more interested in unpicking the seams of the original.

Sleep With Me, and Boys Prefer swing lazily towards a hazy nostalgia for half-empty '50s ballrooms, and Shoe Laces offers a brassy reprise on the theme of Mrs Jones , but these are songs which shine or slump according to the merits of Lang's voice. For all its misty sophistication, thoug, 'Scallywag Jaz' is a brilliantly skittish beginning.

Outside Over There - A Retrospective - from Q Magazine (Johnny Black) Thomas Lang, bless his enigmatic gaze into the middle-distance, clearly hasn't a clue about what's going on in the real world, and that's precisely what has always made his work so refreshing. Based in Liverpool, Lang sounds unlike any Liverpool band past or present or, for that matter, like anybody you could put your finger on. What he does sound like, however, is a classic.

This retrospective of best bits and rare items throws up a clutch of tunes that could have been written any time in the last 50 years and yet would always have sounded contemporary, because Lang's touchstone is not jazz, rock or soul, it's just song. Here's a man who obviously revels in the sheer bliss of singing, built on a foundation of well-crafted melody and made irresistible by the inclusion of the occasional killer hook. He should be rich and famous.