The original Run-Rig Dance Band, performed for the first time as a three piece in 1973 at Glasgow's Kelvin Hall. The line up consisted of Rory on guitar, Calum on drums and Blair Douglas on accordion.

Donnie joined the band the following year to add vocal support. Later Blair left, and they were then joined by accordionist and old school friend Robert Macdonald, who sadly lost his life in 1986, after a long battle against cancer. Up until 1978 the band had been a part time/student occupation, and it was in that format that the debut album, Play Gaelic was recorded for the Scottish based Lismor Recordings. After that tentative step they felt that they should and could set up their own independent record company to allow them the freedom, both financially and creatively to record the more ambitious second album. It was a time of great risk and challenge, but indeed that has been the story of Runrig's whole existence. Ridge Records was successfully formed and the band took on full time professional status.

Malcolm was cajoled into giving up a brilliant university career, Rory, a graphic designer, designed his last masterpiece for the ad. agencies, and Donnie and Calum, being teachers couldn't run out of the school gates fast enough. In 1979 they went into the studio and recorded The Highland Connection. The band sound was now filling out, and there was a need to extend the musical parameters. The rhythm section was bolstered up by the addition of Fifer, Iain Bayne, taking up duties on the drum stool, with Calum moving on to percussion. This was to be the line up that recorded the classic Recovery Album in 1981. Recovery was very much a concept album, dealing with the social history of the Scottish Gael, and tapped into the evolving fightback for the Gaelic language and culture that the band was so much a part of. It is from that environment, musically, physically, emotionally and spiritually, that the core of Runrig's substance originated.