The Local Train band's story is one of songs that outgrew their makers' plans. Raman Negi, Ramit Mehra and Sahil Sarin formed the group in Chandigarh in 2008. They put a demo on MySpace and picked a name they assumed they would change. They never did. With guitarist Paras Thakur, they became the band that, in Mehra's words, set out to put "the Hindi in indie". Two albums, years of college stages and one painful split later, "Choo Lo" sits at number six on Spotify's Rock in India playlist.

The Local Train at a glance

  • Formed: 2008, Chandigarh; based in New Delhi since 2015
  • Current members: Paras Thakur (guitar), Ramit Mehra (bass), Sahil Sarin (drums)
  • Former frontman: Raman Negi (vocals, acoustic guitar), who left in December 2021; his exit became public in April 2022
  • Albums: Aalas Ka Pedh (2015) and Vaaqif (2018)
  • Key songs: "Choo Lo", "Aaoge Tum Kabhi", "Kaisey Jiyun", "Khudi", "Dilnawaz", "Mere Yaar"
  • Latest release: "Tu Hai Kahaan" with Lucky Ali, for the film Do Aur Do Pyaar (2024)
  • On Spotify's Rock in India: "Choo Lo", track six in our snapshot of 13 October 2026

How did The Local Train band start?

Not on a campus. "The four of us met each other for the music," Sahil Sarin told Musicunplugged.in. Raman Negi was working at TCS and looking for musicians when he met Ramit Mehra in a Chandigarh studio. Mehra already played with Sarin in other projects, so Sarin was the natural choice for the rhythm section.

The name was almost an afterthought. When their first demo was ready they made a MySpace page, tried a few names, and settled on The Local Train "thinking maybe we'll change the name later," Sarin said. The song they uploaded was "Choo Lo". It "caught in the college circuit and so did the band name."

Paras Thakur arrived in 2011, after dropping out of Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh. The Hindu notes there were other members before him, but the four-piece of Negi, Thakur, Mehra and Sarin is the one that stuck. In the early days they filled their sets with covers. "We did covers of our biggest influences like A.R. Rahman and Lucky Ali, adding our own twist," Negi said.

Why "Choo Lo" still matters

According to The Indian Express, "Choo Lo" went viral in 2013, two years before it appeared on an album. "Aaoge Tum Kabhi" and "Kaisey Jiyun" followed in 2014. Those three songs are still what most listeners mean by The Local Train: melodies you can sing after one listen, built on acoustic guitar and Hindi lyrics about longing, with none of the gloss of a film song.

That was deliberate. "For us, it has always been about breaking the stereotypes, of putting the Hindi in indie and making original music," Mehra told The Indian Express in 2015, calling the group a "Hindie" rock band. They played colleges and corporate shows and turned down weddings and parties, "because we just can't play requests."

They also did the work themselves. "Being an independent band we don't have industry support as such," Sarin said, describing the four of them "running a tight ship" with their management and putting videos online for fans to share. It is the same do-it-yourself spirit we traced in how Indian rock learned to do it itself.

Aalas Ka Pedh and Vaaqif: the essential albums

The debut, Aalas Ka Pedh ("The Tree of Laziness"), came out on 25 September 2015. The title was a joke about how long they had put off making a record. "We've been putting this on the back-burner for so long, but it's out now," Mehra said. Its nine tracks include "Choo Lo", "Aaoge Tum Kabhi", "Bandey", "Kaisey Jiyun", "Yeh Zindagi Hai" and "Dil Mere". It was released with Ashish Manchanda's Flying Carpet Productions and mixed by Chris Hesse, the drummer of Hoobastank. "Aaoge Tum Kabhi" also landed on the soundtrack of Pan Nalin's film Angry Indian Goddesses, after a friend of the producer saw the band at IIT Roorkee's Thomso festival.

That year the band also won the first edition of Sennheiser's Top 50 band hunt, judged by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and Salim-Sulaiman.

Vaaqif ("Aware") followed in January 2018 with eight tracks. Its first single, "Khudi", came out in June 2017, and its video won Platinum Film of the Year in the music video category at the 2017 India Film Project Awards. Thakur described the album as "a much more evolved side" of the band. "Aalas Ka Pedh was made when all of us were really young," he told Rolling Stone India. "With 'Khudi' for example, it's about self-actualization. There are songs about being a non-believer, about when you're not one amongst the sheep."

The band promised "some heavy riffs and powerful vocals" alongside songs written for "acoustic spaces", and they toured more than 20 cities with the album. Negi told The Hindu how it was paid for: "we had to put money earned from shows into our recordings."

What does The Local Train sound like?

The influences Mehra listed to The Hindu run from Nirvana, Aerosmith and U2 to Lucky Ali, Silk Route and Junoon. "Our influences are vast, including rock, jazz, Indipop and whatever. But we found a common ground," he said. Songs usually begin on acoustic guitar and take shape in the jam room. "Raman pens down a lot of the lyrics while Paras handles a lot of the arranging work," Sarin said.

The words, in Hindi and Urdu, come from everyday life: "our observations on love, life and everything else." Bands outside the Hindi belt have built their audiences in their own languages, as we explored in regional sounds reshaping Indian music and in our Thaikkudam Bridge history. The Local Train did the same in Hindi, where they had to compete with Bollywood.

The Local Train band members: who's in the band now?

That changed in 2022. On 6 April, a fan asked why the band had gone quiet, and Negi replied on Twitter: "I quit the band like 4 months ago!" Their last show had been at the Falcon Festival in Dima Hasao, Assam, in November 2021. A year-end show in Jaipur was called off the day before.

Negi told Hindustan Times that leaving "was on my mind for a while. I wanted to explore the side of me as a singer-songwriter, because there's just so much more I want to say." On 19 April the other three released a statement: "TLT prevails stronger than ever! We're here to stay and do what we've always done. We continue to wish Raman the best."

The Local Train band members today are Paras Thakur on guitar, Ramit Mehra on bass and Sahil Sarin on drums. Negi has released two solo albums, Shakhsiyat (2022) and Chaltey Purzay (2024).

What is the Raman Negi copyright case?

In December 2025, Negi filed a commercial suit in the Delhi High Court against his former bandmates, Rolling Stone India and Bar and Bench reported. He alleges copyright infringement, denial of royalties and misuse of the band's trademarks. He claims sole authorship of the lyrics of 15 songs across the two albums, and sole composition credit for five, including "Choo Lo", "Aaoge Tum Kabhi" and "Kaisey Jiyun". Justice Tejas Karia heard the matter briefly and listed it for March 2026. These are Negi's allegations and the court has not ruled on them. The reports we reviewed included no response from the band. We'll report the outcome when there is one.

Where is The Local Train in 2026?

The trio came back on 2 April 2024 with "Tu Hai Kahaan", a song they composed for the film Do Aur Do Pyaar and Lucky Ali sang. Hindustan Times called it a return "after a five year hiatus". The band had once covered Lucky Ali songs on stage. Thakur wouldn't give dates. "We're not sure when exactly we'll release music," he said. Asked about their sound, he said, "you'll have to listen to our new music to grasp our future sound because we can't put it into words." Sarin added that many listeners "are discovering the band and our songs even today."

As of 13 October 2026, "Tu Hai Kahaan" is still the band's latest release on Spotify and Apple Music, and we have found no confirmed date for a third album. Until there is one, "Choo Lo" is still the song new listeners find first.

FAQ

Who are the members of The Local Train?

Paras Thakur (guitar), Ramit Mehra (bass) and Sahil Sarin (drums). Founding vocalist and lyricist Raman Negi left in December 2021, and his exit became public in April 2022.

Who sang "Choo Lo" by The Local Train?

Raman Negi, the band's vocalist at the time. It was the first song they uploaded, to MySpace, and it appears on their 2015 debut album, Aalas Ka Pedh.

When was The Local Train formed?

In 2008, in Chandigarh, by Raman Negi, Ramit Mehra and Sahil Sarin. Paras Thakur joined in 2011, and the band moved to New Delhi in 2015.

Is The Local Train still together?

Yes, as a trio. Their latest release is "Tu Hai Kahaan" with Lucky Ali (2024). They have promised more music but have not announced a date for a third album.

Sources

Cover photo: The Local Train performing live, August 2016, by Lillottama via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Local_Train.jpg). Modified: cropped and resized.