The Band from Rockall The Band from Rockall The Band from Rockall is a duo and solo project of Runrig songwriters Calum and Rory Macdonald. It is also the title of their debut self-titled bilingual album in English and Gaelic "The Band from Rockall" (long title being "The Band from Rockall: The Solo Project from Calum and Rory Macdonald"). The duo's name comes from Rockall, a remote rocky uninhabited islet in the North Atlantic Ocean, lying 300 miles west of the Scottish mainland. This was chosen by the brothers as a point 'half-way' between their native North Uist and the United States, representing both
Rockall Basin (also known as the "Hatton Rockall Basin"). In 1956 the British scientist James Fisher referred to the island as "the most isolated small rock in the oceans of the world". The neighbouring Hasselwood Rock and several other pinnacles of the surrounding Helen's Reef are smaller, at half the size of Rockall or less, and equally remote, but those formations are legally not islands or points on land, as they are often submerged completely, only revealed momentarily above certain types of ocean surface waves. Rockall is about wide and long at its base and rises sheer to a height of