James Cottriall

James Cottriall (born 1 January 1986, Stratford upon Avon) is an English musician, currently living in Los Angeles, California. He became famous throughout Austria with the success of his first single, "Unbreakable", which spent twenty weeks in the Austrian top 40 charts in summer 2010. "Unbreakable" was nominated for the Song of the Year category at the 2010 Austrian music Amadeus Awards.

Cottriall grew up in the countryside of Warwickshire, England, just outside Stratford-upon-Avon. He has two brothers, Ben Cottriall and Alex Cottriall. His father is a stamp dealer. His Mother has a degree from Warwick University. He studied German at King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon, and then at the University of Nottingham where part of the course required him to study for one year abroad in a German-speaking country. He chose to study at the University of Vienna in Austria. Following encouragement from fellow students and friends, he began to give performances of his songs in cafés and bars around Vienna, playing a combination of covers together with his own, newly composed songs. He was also a regular and notorious busker on the Kärntnerstraße, in Vienna's town centre. Following a measure of success, when his one year of study was completed, Cottriall chose to remain in Vienna to actively promote his music. On December 29th his wife Iris gave birth to their 1st child Lily Cottriall.

Cottriall released his single, "Unbreakable", in Austria on 9 April 2010. It received generous airplay from almost every local and national Austrian radio station. It reached number 1 in the Ö3 Hörercharts (Most Requested by listeners charts for Austria) and remained in the Top 40 Charts for 20 weeks. The song was included on the Ö3 Greatest Hits vol. 50 and AustroPop Forever vol. 4 compilation albums. The song was accompanied by a promotional video of Cottriall with a fictional girlfriend going through an emotional break-up, with a concurrent sub-plot of him playing his guitar in an apartment with a broken water pipe gradually flooding the room, leaving him eventually submerged.

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