Girlfriend

In the early 1990s, Robin Cryer and Phil Hyland met in New York City. Robin was performing in a musical at the Actor’s Playhouse in Greenwich Village; Phil was writing songs, recording demos and playing open mics around the city. They met, connected, and soon Phil asked Robin to sing on some of his new recordings.

The chemistry was immediate.

On October 10, 1993, Girlfriend played its first public show at an East Village bar. From there, they became part of New York’s downtown club scene, performing throughout the city and eventually finding a home at Sin-é, the legendary East Village club that would become closely associated with Jeff Buckley. Girlfriend’s songs were lyrically driven, emotionally direct and built around Phil’s distinctive guitar work, with Robin’s voice providing the other half of the conversation.

In 1997, Girlfriend recorded its debut album, The New Me, with producer John Morand at Sound of Music Recording Studios in Richmond, Virginia. Released nationally on Celsius Records, the album found its way onto radio and into film and television. The band also performed at A Day in the Garden, Woodstock ’98, where they were interviewed by Joey Ramone on WDST, and later received an invitation to open for ’80s New Wave icon Howard Jones in New York City.

And then… silence.

The gigs stopped. The touring ended. Life moved on.

But the songs didn't disappear.

Girlfriend had written far more music than ever made it onto that one album. Some of the songs became live favorites—played for New York audiences and then left behind when the band stopped performing. No recordings. No streaming links. No digital archive. Just memories, old notebooks, tapes and the songs themselves.

Now, nearly three decades later, Girlfriend is bringing those songs back.

Rather than recreate the past, Robin and Phil are returning to the original material, culling from original tape recordings and unfinished sessions that occurred in New York City, Los Angeles and Richmond, Virginia. Some of these songs aren't being reconstructed from memory. They're being rebuilt from the actual recordings they made nearly 30 years ago.

It's part musical archaeology, part time travel.

The goal isn't to make the songs sound like they were recorded yesterday. It's to uncover what was already there—to preserve the character, imperfections and spirit of the music as it existed in the 1990s, while finally giving these songs the recordings they never had.

These recordings are more than unreleased songs. They are a time capsule of a young couple finding their voices and navigating a nascent relationship through music—one song answering another in an extended musical conversation.

There is something uniquely intimate about hearing music that survived without an audience, without algorithms, without social media—and without knowing whether anyone would ever hear it again.

Girlfriend’s rediscovered recordings capture that moment, and that's the beauty part: New York City in the 1990s, before smartphones, before streaming, before everyone carried a camera in their pocket. A world of clubs, open mics, pay phones, handwritten lyrics, four-track recordings and songs passed from person to person.

The sound is unmistakably of its time—but the feeling isn't.

Nearly 30 years later, Girlfriend is opening the vault.

One song. One tape. One story at a time.

The ’90s called. They want their music back.