The Thaikkudam Bridge history begins with a plan to stop after one show. In 2013, cousins Govind Menon (now credited as Govind Vasantha) and Siddharth Menon pulled together a room full of musician friends for one episode of Kappa TV's Music Mojo. "We didn't have any intention of continuing," Govind told The News Minute in 2017. "We were just going to perform those 12 songs on Music Mojo and go back to our respective lives." Thirteen years and, by the band's own count, more than 650 shows in 25 countries later, they still haven't gone back.

Thaikkudam Bridge at a glance

  • Formed: 2013, Kochi, Kerala, for a single Kappa TV Music Mojo session
  • Founders: Govind Vasantha and Siddharth Menon (Siddharth left in 2017 to pursue acting and a solo career)
  • Breakthrough: "Fish Rock", their first original, which spread on YouTube after the TV broadcast
  • Albums: Navarasam (2015) and Namah (2019); a third album is in progress
  • Sound: rock built on Indian folk and classical music, with progressive, pop and metal turns
  • On Spotify's Rock in India: "Fish Rock", in our snapshot of the playlist taken on 13 October 2026

How did Thaikkudam Bridge start?

Govind and Siddharth were watching Music Mojo at home when Siddharth suggested they try out for it. Their audition was a medley of A.R. Rahman songs. The channel liked it, and the cousins used their contacts to put a band together. Govind, who had worked in film music for years, called in guitarists Mithun Raju and Ashok Nelson, keyboardist Ruthin Thej, drummer Abin Thej, and singers Vipin Lal, Christin Jose and Piyush Kapoor. Siddharth brought bassist Vian Fernandes and vocalists Krishna Bongane and Nila Madhav Mohapatra. "Everybody had a decent career going on at the time, and none of this was planned," Ashok said.

The name came at the last minute. The night before the recording they still didn't have one, so they took the name of the small bridge in Kochi where they had been jamming. As Govind put it to Musicunplugged.in, it was "an innocuous small bridge that nobody knew of until the band was formed."

They played 12 songs on the show, mostly covers and two originals. The Hindu reported that the broadcast itself "didn't match the expectations of the band", so they put the videos on YouTube. That's where things took off. A medley of old Malayalam film songs called "Nostalgia" passed 100,000 views. The other number people wouldn't stop sharing was a song about fish.

Why "Fish Rock" went viral

"Ayela, mathi, choora, kaari, kanava, killimeen, vatta, vaala…" The chorus of "Fish Rock" is a roll call of the fish you'd find at a Kerala market, sung over a folk lilt that turns into a stomping rock groove. "I love eating fish and it was a given that I had to write a song on fish, a tribute to my love for fish," Govind told The Hindu. The track came out on 30 August 2013. Within three weeks it had passed 50,000 views, which was a lot for a Malayalam indie song at the time.

It's easy to file "Fish Rock" as a novelty, but the song lasted because it is so plainly local, a Kerala kitchen and a Kerala sense of humour with no apology for either. Thirteen years on, it's still the song Spotify picks for them on Rock in India.

The offers started coming in. "We began getting a few inquiries, but we turned them down saying we were not a full-time band," Mithun told Khaleej Times in August 2026. Eventually they agreed to a single test gig, at Model Engineering College in Thrikkakkara. "That one show changed everything," Govind said. "You expect your first gig to be in a pub somewhere, where the audience is half drunk and half listening to your music," he told The News Minute. "This was different and it changed everything." Soon, Mithun said, they were playing "18-20 shows a month, often travelling long distances."

Thaikkudam Bridge members: who's in the band?

Thaikkudam Bridge is less a five-piece than a small orchestra. The official site describes a 15-member ensemble of "nine vocalists and six instrumentalists from the length and breadth of the country". By August 2026, Khaleej Times was counting 13 members. The core has held steady: Mithun Raju on lead guitar, Ashok Nelson on rhythm guitar, Vian Fernandes on bass, Ruthin Thej on keyboards, Anish TN on drums, and Govind Vasantha on violin and vocals. The singers have included Peethambaran Menon, Vipin Lal, Christin Jose, Anish Krishnan, Krishna Bongane and Nila Madhav Mohapatra.

So how does a band with that many singers still sound like one band? Mithun explained it plainly: "Two guitarists, a keyboardist, a bass guitar, one drums and a violinist. For all the songs, this is the common thing. This is the glue of the entire sound. Even though the singers come and change, we do sound like a band because the instrumentalists remain the same." Some of the singers are Hindustani-trained and others Carnatic, and the band writes each song for the voice that will sing it. "We decide our songs based on the singer," Govind said.

The biggest change came in 2017, when co-founder Siddharth Menon left to pursue acting and a solo career. Ashok called it mutual: "We both felt that we were restricting him."

Navarasam and Namah: the essential albums

The debut, Navarasam, came out in late 2015. Wikipedia records a digital release on 21 October and a CD launch in Kochi that November; the band's own website dates it to 2016. It moves between Malayalam, Tamil and Hindi. It ranges across prog metal, Hindustani classical and playful Malayalam rock. The title track, sung by Vipin Lal with lyrics by Dhanya Suresh Menon, is about Kathakali and the emotions its performers show through their faces. Mithun now calls the album "very heavy, dark". Lighter songs such as "One" and "Urumbu" still sit near the top of their Spotify catalogue.

Namah, released on 30 November 2019, was something else. The band spent about two years on a tribute to the musicians who shaped them, then went out and got many of those musicians to play on it. Pandit Ram Narayan's sarangi opens "Saawariya". Dream Theater's Jordan Rudess plays on the Tamil dance-floor favourite "Saalaikal". Marco Minnemann drums on "Inside My Head", the band's first English song. Guthrie Govan plays acoustic guitar on "I Can See You". Former Avial singer Anandraj Benjamin Paul sings "Kanne". The album closes with "Thekkini", a nine-minute instrumental that pits former Lamb of God drummer Chris Adler against mridangam master Umayalpuram K. Sivaraman. Rolling Stone India gave Namah four stars out of five. "If you start swimming in the ocean you just want to go deeper," Ashok told Firstpost.

What happened with Navarasam and Kantara's "Varaha Roopam"?

In 2022, the Kannada blockbuster Kantara turned the song "Navarasam" into a legal case. Listeners noticed how closely the film's song "Varaha Roopam" resembled it, and Thaikkudam Bridge sued for copyright infringement. On 28 October 2022, the Principal District Court in Kozhikode restrained the film's makers from using the music in "Varaha Roopam" without the band's permission, and the order reached streaming and online platforms. The film's director, Rishab Shetty, denied any copying while saying, as The Hindu reported, that he knew "Navarasam" and had been inspired by it. That November the Kerala High Court dismissed producer Hombale Films' challenge to the order, noting it was only interim, not final.

It mattered beyond one song: an independent band took on one of the year's biggest films in court and won an early round.

Why Thaikkudam Bridge matter to Indian rock

When the band started out, Ashok said, the market for independent acts in Kerala was almost non-existent: "Earlier in Kerala, the maximum payment for a concert was Rs 15,000. That was it, even for the best musicians." He believes that changed after them. Govind had a sharper theory about why it had been so hard. "We have 10 songs in a film, people don't need more," he said. "The day there are no songs in movies, independent music will rise."

They treated video as part of the music from the start, sent young listeners back to old Malayalam film songs, and showed regional rock could fill a main stage. The stages kept getting bigger: NH7 Weekender, YouTube FanFest in Bengaluru in 2018, Milwaukee's Summerfest in 2019, Expo 2020 Dubai. In March 2026 they played Sydney, Melbourne and the Adelaide Fringe. For more on how bands from outside the Hindi belt changed the national scene, read our piece on regional sounds reshaping Indian music. For the older bands who built the circuit Thaikkudam Bridge now headlines, see how Indian rock learned to do it itself.

What's next: a third album, one single at a time

The band says the next record will sound different. "If somebody watched us in 2013 or '14, from that time till now, there has been a big change," a band member told The Indian Sun in January 2026. "We're working on a new album, and this is going to be a sound-shifting moment." Ashok Nelson went further: "The sound we're about to unleash hasn't been heard before. It's a completely different leaf we've turned."

They're also changing how they release music. "We are planning to release each and every single separately unlike putting it all out at one time," Mithun told Khaleej Times in August, adding that the first single was very close. They also play fewer shows now and leave time for members' own projects. When the single lands, we'll review it here.

FAQ

When was Thaikkudam Bridge formed?

In 2013, in Kochi, Kerala. Govind Vasantha and Siddharth Menon put the band together for one episode of Kappa TV's Music Mojo, and the YouTube response kept it going.

Why is the band called Thaikkudam Bridge?

They named it after a small bridge in Kochi near the place where they jammed. The name was settled the night before their Music Mojo recording, and former member Piyush Kapoor suggested it.

What is Thaikkudam Bridge's most famous song?

"Fish Rock", their first original, released on 30 August 2013. It's the track Spotify includes on its Rock in India playlist.

How many albums has Thaikkudam Bridge released?

Two: Navarasam (2015) and Namah (2019). A third album is in progress, with its songs due to come out one single at a time.

Sources

Cover photo: Thaikkudam Bridge performing in Toronto, July 2019, by Streetsoda via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thaikkudam_Bridge_performing_at_Toronto_in_2019.jpg). Modified: cropped and resized.