A fledging music festival is taking over the former home of T in the Park.
The Mugstock festival will be held this summer in the grounds of Strathallan Castle in Perthshire .
The event plans to use large pedestrian bridges and hard standing roads built for T in the Park to welcome its own revellers.
The area was altered to accommodate tens of thousands of campers and a throng of festival traffic in 2015.
Mugstock boasts less than two per cent of the headcount seen at the last T in the Park.
Co-founder Alan Govan said: “It feels a bit like we’re Jack, we’ve just climbed the beanstalk and we’re in the giant’s house.”
Alan conceived of a non-profit music event while at university with friend Stuart Nelson.
Both grew up playing in bands in small Scottish towns where they had to organise gigs themselves if they wanted to perform.
The pair launched Mugstock in 2015 in Mugdock Country Park.
The festival’s following is modest - welcoming 1,500 to one event - but both Alan and Stuart have saw the same people returning annually, often families with children.
Their proposed campsite at Strathallan comes with a water system and fibre broadband courtesy of T in the Park.
Alan said: “The small festivals have this sense of community that I felt the larger events did not - it’s about that same escape, being in another world but with that sense of safety.
“You feel like you can come out of the weekend feeling better than when you went into it.”
Mugstock has boasted a large proportion of Scottish acts across many genres - Idlewild lead singer Roddy Woomble, Malcolm Middleton from Arab Strap, hip hop outfit Stanley Odd, ska band Bombskare, Emma Pollock, and Rachel Sermanni.
Alan and Stuart want to continue showcasing homegrown talent at the 2020 event.
Alan said: “We’ve spent a lot of time handpicking the very best stuff we can show you because there’s so much more talent than there is space for it to be seen.
“There’s more and more talent appearing while venues and festivals are shutting down, so it feels more vital that there are these spaces where they can go.”
This year’s Mugstock was cancelled during heavy rain and flooding.
Stuart said: “It is far more expensive to put on outdoor events than ever before.
“Musicians are still very underpaid and while everyone seems to agree that festivals are a great idea, getting support for them is often very difficult.
“We’ve tried to help a lot of acts that probably wouldn’t get festival slots around this sort of size because we just see them as being really worthwhile.
“We’re feeling the crunch like everyone else, and as a result there’s a few festivals that have been left hanging and had to close down.”
Mugstock is set to take place at Strathallan Castle from July 31 to August 3.
Promoted by DF Concerts, T in the Park attracted up to 255,000 people and 70,000 campers.
In July festival organiser Geoff Ellis confirmed T in the Park would not be returning.
