Picture a grubby red sandstone tower on the south side of Glasgow’s River Clyde, disused and dilapidated, surrounded by empty car parks, overgrown scrub and warehousing space. It’s just past 3:AM, and all the clubs in the city whose names you might know are closed.

“You walked in and there was a staircase, then up two floors was a little window where a suggested donation was made,” says John Markey, nursing a mid-week pint in a pub on the Southside. “A lot of graffiti artists were involved so it had an art space vibe. On your right as you went into the main room there was a chill-out area with cargo netting and lots of sofas. At the back was a DJ area with a huge screen behind the decks; rumour has it it went missing from a famous rapper’s tour of Glasgow. It was really impressive. There was a well-stocked bar that would do cocktails. They served Buckfast, obviously, and bottles of water too. The best thing about it was that there was an actual functioning bathroom. At one stage there was even a toilet attendant!”

“On the way up the stairs there were mannequins dressed in bowling shirts and beautiful bits of graffiti,” adds Oliver Melling, Markey’s friend and DJ partner, perched on a high stool as the football results come in behind him. “It wasn’t ramshackle, there was a respect between each piece – a bicycle wheel hanging down above you, traffic cones which had been graffed, strings of LEDs. You got the sense that this place hadn’t happened overnight. There were so many layers of expression because tiers of people were involved over a long period of time, passing it on to the next person, and the next person…”

Checkmate – the club to which they’re referring – came to an end in June 2019. The manner of its ending had fairly traumatic consequences for Markey and Melling, as it happened immediately after the pair, along with a friend, were exposed as the supposed ‘Men Behind the Mayhem’ in Scottish newspaper The Sunday Mail (no relation to The Daily Mail), amid an investigation into the city’s famous ‘afters’ scene.

Any clubber in the city whose focus is on quality music will be aware that the ‘Glasgow afters’ is a widely known culture of unlicensed warehouse afterparties which occur – as all those who we spoke to agreed – as a direct result of the city’s licensing laws only allowing clubs to stay open until 3:AM (a recent extension until 4:AM has been agreed for certain venues).

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While early closing may help drive the internationally renowned atmosphere in Glasgow’s clubs, with the narrow window between pub and club closing inspiring a particularly furious period of dancing, it also feeds the demand for a carry-on. And, as any resident of Berlin, London or Amsterdam will tell you, the world doesn’t cave in when you hand out all-night licenses.