Marillion’s Steve Hogarth to Headline Progfest 2025
[Editor’s Note: Dr. Jon Epstein is a sociologist, criminologist and author. He most recently served on the faculty of Greensboro College in North Carolina as Director of Holocaust Studies after having taught at New Mexico State and Wake Forest. But, most of all, he’s a Prog-Rock fan, a longtime devotee of British band Marillion and a friend of its lead singer Steve Hogarth. The prog world in the Northeast has been buzzing with the news that Hogarth is slated to headline ProgFest this weekend at The Williams Center in Rutherford. We thank Dr. Epstein for his contribution to The Jersey Sound.]
Steve Hogarth is slated to headline Progstock 2025. It marks the first time he’ll deliver a solo show anywhere in the U.S. For fans in the States, this is not just a novelty—it’s a landmark. Hogarth’s presence has always loomed large in the American underground prog circuits, but a dedicated solo set across the Atlantic might open a fresh chapter.
The first time I met Steve Hogarth and told him I was from Ohio he got very excited because “my very favorite pair of socks came from Ashtabula!” I liked him immediately. From that moment I knew I was in the orbit of someone who saw the small details as large parts of the artistic outer world. When we met, he had just completed his first album Seasons End as Fish’s replacement in the British band Marillion and was coming to grips with the reality of replacing his larger-than-life predecessor. Now, some 35 years and 14 albums later. Hogarth has put that struggle far behind him, even as a small number of fans are still arguing about the wisdom of replacing Fish.
By the late 1990s, Hogarth had already become inseparable from Marillion in the minds of many but he clearly needed a territory of his own. In 1997, he released Ice Cream Genius, under the moniker “h” (a tease, a wink, a humility). Whereas his early years in Marillion were often about bridging continuity (after Fish’s departure) and finding a new voice within a storied band, Ice Cream Genius felt like a reveal: that Hogarth’s private workshop was stocked with wires, analog textures, tremors, and odd pop impulses. He recruited a wild cast of contributors (Richard Barbieri, Clem Burke, Dave Gregory) and allowed himself to drift into moods and corners that Marillion might only touch obliquely.
Critics recognized the promise: the album is a kaleidoscope of style, alternating between wistful piano balladry, electronic atmospheres, and more muscular rock touches. The alignment of his solo impulses with his Marillion years is less about divergence, more about expansion: a prism splitting the same light. After Ice Cream Genius, Hogarth didn’t vanish into a “solo career” bubble—he crisscrossed between collaborative side projects and intermittent solo performance, treating his own brand of exploration as supplements, not replacements, to Marillion.
Hogarth’s partnership with Richard Barbieri is one of his most fertile side arcs. Their 2012 album Not The Weapon But The Hand bears a texture that is not just “Hogarth meets Barbieri,” but something remixed, mutated. As ProgArchives puts it: “…this excellent album bears hardly any resemblance to the duo’s day jobs … at turns deeply dark and disturbing, and at others uplifting … but never anything less than interesting.” They revisit the land of ambient, the fragmented, the emotionally fissured, letting silence and shade speak. It’s less a “side project” and more a lateral room built off the main house.
In the years since, he and Barbieri have continued weaving—Arc Light (2013) is an echo of that dance. Meanwhile, Hogarth dipped into theatrical and chamber-leaning waters, writing on planes and in hotel rooms while touring with Marillion. He also released diaries (the Invisible Man volumes) that brim with interior commentary, not just rock-star dispatches. One feature worth noting is how Hogarth’s solo and side work often echo to his Marillion writing—and vice versa. The tension between personal minimalism and grander ensemble statements shows in both. Listening through his catalog, it’s possible to hear a riff or motif in a Marillion track and think “I’ve heard him teasing that years earlier.” His side work is less about “escaping Marillion” and more about excavating what he might otherwise have to suppress.
He has also intermittently toured solo (or quasi-solo) in the mid-2000s, combining performance and conversation, letting the audience into the process. That said, his solo visibility has always remained somewhat quiet—more cult than splash. He seems comfortable that way. His projects come not with bombast but with invitations: “Walk with me awhile in this fog, this margin, this scratch of light.”
Within Marillion’s post-1989 era (the Hogarth era), there’s been a poetic exchange between the band’s studio albums and Steve’s side arcs. If a Marillion record is fronted by a narrative or emotional map, his solo/collaborative works sketch the footnotes, the alleys, the marginalia. For instance: the atmospherics of Not The Weapon But The Hand reverberate in Marillion tracks that lean ambient or introspective. The peppering of sound design, glitch, fractured arrangement—those are spurts in his solo experiments that bleed into the band’s palette. Conversely, the structured drama of a Marillion suite gives him a frame of reference to push against in his more free side experiments.
Also, Hogarth’s solo freedom sometimes liberates him from the need for “crowd-pleasing” prog tropes. When your main identity is tied to a beloved band, side or solo work becomes the place to risk failure, to try what might be too odd for the many. In that sense, his creative health depends on those side tangents. It feels more balanced: he is not wholly tethered to one mode. That dual identity—band mainstay, solo wanderer—makes him a rare type of anchor in prog rock: rooted but restless. Some fans decry that the side detours dilute focus; others argue they sharpen the edge. I tend toward the latter. Hogarth’s solo adventures make me hear new corners in his Marillion voice.
Through the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and into the 2020s, Hogarth has displayed low-key resilience. He’s not the kind of artist chasing reinvention for its own sake—rather, he accumulates voices, textures, collaborations. He layers. He subtracts. He revisits. 2023 saw him release Waiting To Be Born (with Barbieri) and also reissues tied to his solo live
presence. The pace of side work isn’t frantic, but persistent. Projects are spaced but meaningful.
What’s especially compelling is that Hogarth seems to treat time as a companion rather than an adversary. His solo work doesn’t chase trends or try to be “currently relevant.” It oscillates in its own frequency, often aligning with where he is in life—his introspections, the weight of memory, the play of vulnerability. He hasn’t needed to declare loudly “I’m doing this now,” because his output quietly accrues meaning for those who follow. If you map the corridors between Ice Cream Genius, Not The Weapon But The Hand, Arc Light, Waiting To Be Born and back to Marillion albums, you see a lattice, not a branching. He doesn’t walk away from his roots; he digs side shafts from the same mine.
What might he bring to ProgStock? I’d bet the program will be a mix—some reimagined Marillion favorites (stripped, re-scored), solo tracks from Ice Cream Genius and beyond, collaboration material, perhaps even a few surprises unearthed from his diaries or side archives. He’s likely to structure it not just as a concert but as part concert, part journey where talk and music circled each other. My prediction: the performance will be intimate in tone (he won’t try to “rock out” the whole night), with moments of quiet revelation punctuated by heightened dynamics. He’ll lean on texture, on dynamics, on moments of silence as much as crescendo. It will feel like stepping into his private studio, with the lights muted, the audience hushed, the air alive with possibility.
For Marillion fans in the U.S., this is a rare chance to hear the voice behind the band in its solitary framing. For new listeners, it’s an introduction to Hogarth’s broader world beyond the “frontman” label. When Hogarth steps on that stage at Progstock, he carries decades of parallel stories—band lore, solo detours, whispered experiments. This will not be merely a side gig. It may well become a foundational myth: Hogarth, center stage, unaccompanied (or selectively accompanied), inviting us deeper into his art. So if you’re there—don’t just listen. Lean in. He has been whispering along the edges of his music for years. At Progstock 2025, he may finally speak in full.