Stayed is an album about the kinds of love that don’t shout, but linger. Built on quiet moments, half-closed doors, and the echoes of words never said, each track traces the soft ache of connection—how it forms, how it frays, and how it somehow endures. These aren’t grand declarations. They’re confessions left on voice memos. Glances held too long. Goodbyes that felt like maybe.

With textures ranging from ambient folk to cinematic indie, Stayed drifts through longing, memory, and stillness. Some songs ask to be heard in headphones at midnight. Others belong to empty roads or rooms that still hold someone’s scent.

This is not an album about falling in love.
It’s an album about the people who never left you—
even when they did.

You Spoke, I Stayed

Dublin born artist Cathal O'Briain enjoys writing original contemporary Irish Ballads and recreating old but familiar loved melodies. He sings and plays fingerstyle acoustic guitar, drawing upon aspects of human nature and history in his original songs and modernised covers of older ballads.

His upcoming album 'The 40 Foot' is a body of work from his collaboration with the legendary Producer Peter Eades who has worked with some of Ireland’s top acts such as Clannad, The Chieftains, Thin Lizzy, The Dubliners, Moving Hearts and De Danann.

I work with machines the way some people work with memory—shaping what’s already there, not to control it, but to understand it. The tools I use are made of code, but the intent behind them is completely human.

R.U.D.Y. began as a fictional band. A name I could hide behind. But over time, that fiction became the most honest expression I had. It stopped being a mask and started becoming a mirror—a place to reflect the moments we don’t have words for, the spaces between emotions that feel too raw or too distant to name.

I call what I do synthwrighting. Not because it sounds futuristic, but because it feels accurate. I don’t write songs—I uncover them. I collaborate with algorithms the way a sculptor chips away at stone. Sometimes the machine surprises me. Sometimes it just listens. But what emerges is always shaped by instinct, memory, and feeling.

These songs aren’t performances. They’re echoes. Sonic fragments of questions I don’t always know how to ask. I’m not here to offer answers or compete with noise—I’m here to slow things down enough that something deeper can be heard.

R.U.D.Y. is not a band. It’s not even really a name. It’s a signal. A reminder. Something you’re meant to feel before you understand.

And if you’re still listening, that means you're not done yet.