Perhaps the most paradigm-shifting bike for John was the Starling Cycles Murmur, which he often refers to as the best full-suspension bike he’s ridden. Yet, he’d never met the people behind the Bristol-based brand until a recent road trip following Bespoked UK.
John had built up the brand to be mountain bike royalty – but after hanging out with the team Inside / Out of their Bristol-based shop, he realized that their m.o. is less royalty and more serf. The folks behind Starling are working-class, core mountain bikers, who love nothing more than a rip in the woods.
Read on for a look inside and out of Starling Cycles and what John thought of the makers of his all-time favorite full-suspension mountain bike…
We Were Running Late
Petor and I were running late. Again. Let me tell you, being on the road for weeks on end takes a toll on aging bodies. After Bespoked UK, we – Petor, Cari, and I – loaded our lives into his yellow Mercedes Sprinter van for a whirlwind tour of British builders and manufacturers. When planning our journey, it felt reasonable, but at this point in the trip, we were teetering on the edge of mental and physical collapse.
I’m making it sound worse than it was, but only hindsight offers such honesty. At the time, we were both pretty cooked, and we were running late. Again. To be fair, a parking garage goblin had unfairly issued Petor a ticket, and his contesting it ate up a lot of time.
Sitting at a Bristol cafe waiting for an egg sandwich and being pleasantly impressed with the long black I’d ordered, I felt tired but sated from an almost three-week journey through the UK. Petor turned on his video camera and asked me, “How do you feel?” and I replied, “Nervous,” which surprised him. “Why?”
Nervous because visiting Starling Cycles’ workshop meant I was going to be in the presence of the team who fundamentally changed how I viewed mountain bikes, and over the course of six years riding their bikes, I’d built them up to be mountain bike royalty.
Before I reviewed the Murmur in 2019, carbon full-suspension bikes just felt dead to me, lacking any personality or delivering feelings of singularity. Sure, various kinematics allow bikes to behave differently, but the feel of those bikes wasn’t vibing with me. Dead. Hollow. Resonant. Plastic. I’ll spare you the bullshit, waxing poetic about the qualities of steel – but at that point in time, I hadn’t found a full-suspension bike built with good steel. Yet.
Murmuration
Thanks to Jon Harris from NSMB, I got hold of a Murmur – the bike he’d reviewed – and it blew my mind. Its 853 chassis flexed and damped the rough riding in Los Angeles’ San Gabriel Mountains. You can read all about my first murmuration in my initial encounter review, then my personal build, and my V3 Murmur review in our Archives at the bottom of this post.
As the owner of a media company, I really should recuse myself from full-suspension bike reviews because nothing comes close to how hard my Murmur V3 fucks. The bike just strums my heartstrings in a tremolo rhythm that only some Norwegian basement-dwelling black metal one-man band can come close to. It embodies everything I love about metal bikes in an extremely capable package that looks way better than any carbon bike on the market. It looks like a mountain bike.
ANNNNNNNYWAY. Yes, I was nervous. Would these guys think I’m a kook? (I am.) Or a typical journo who can’t ride? (Debatable.) Was I just tired? (You fuckin’ bet!) In my mind, they were royalty, and I felt like a peasant.
Petor and I scarfed down our egg dishes, paid our bill, complimented the waitress on the coffee, and took off towards a business park to the Northwest of Bristol’s city centre.
Inside Starling Cycles
At this point, I’d WhatsApp messaged Jamie, Starling’s PR dude, and told him we were running behind this morning. Following Google Maps, we pulled up to Starling’s factory unit, and that nervousness subsided.
This palette was familiar. The scent of steel wafted over me as the front door opened, and we were greeted by the team. Stacked steel, cutting lubricant, coffee, and melting brass hit me like the smell of yeast and heat walking into a bakery.
Jamie introduced himself – we’d DM’d and emailed hundreds of times – then came Joe, the owner, Dexter, business manager, Noah, a UK consultant for builders and brands, Ollie, the guy who melts the brass, and James, the bike mechanic who also cuts and preps the tubes for Ollie’s torch.
It’s a workshop. There is no behind-the-scenes alchemical transmutation happening here. Simply cut steel, melted brass, a little bit of silver, and a lot of coffee and tea. Always a cuppa.
New Workshop
Joe began to explain that they’d moved into a new space since Sam had visited a few years prior. This factory was delivered raw – they are its first inhabitants – with no rooms nor partitions, and he’d spent a frantic few nights building it out for the team to move into. The bricolage aesthetic reduces the sterile feeling of industrial vibes in the warehouse. There are old fence posts, plywood cut-outs of clouds from his kid’s room, and ephemera around this relatively tight ‘n’ tidy space.
Dex and Joe occupy the front office, keeping the company’s wheels lubed. Inside the main factory, uncut Reynolds 853 is on a rack, straight gauge, uncut 4130 is leaned against the shop’s front wall, final assemblages are hung up awaiting powder coat, a vertical jig, and a brazing station. Up a set of stairs is the bike assembly with boxes, parts, and tools stored.
Then there’s the room where tubes are cut, prepped, and checked in the custom jig. Since many Starling models use the same front-end assembly and come in five sizes, production feels fluid and refined. James can select which size frame he needs to build and cut tubing quickly to match that size on the jig.
Once positioned together, Ollie can assemble the bike in the second vertical jig in the brazing area and get to work.
One Frame, Many Functions
Single-pivot bikes are an inherently simple design. Joe and the team carry this ideology through the entire fabrication process. Sure, there are more complex suspension systems on the market, but a single-pivot bike uses the K.I.S.S. approach: keep it simple, stupid! The Starling fabrication modus operandi aligns perfectly with this acronym.
The genius behind the Starling production system is most of the front triangles are the same across the models. The rear swingarm (and suspension) is what determines the final phenotype of the models. For instance, my Murmur can become a shorter travel Mini Murmur, or a longer travel Mega Murmur, by swapping the rear shock and fork and then moving the front shock mount. Simple.
Bikes like the singlespeed full-suspension Beady Little Eye are different because the rear swingarm has an integrated eccentric chain tension dropout, but the front triangle looks just like the Murmur’s. Other models, like the Twist and Mega Twist, use a different rear swingarm for their mixed wheels. Even the wild singlespeed DH bikes the team has cranked out in the past possess that distinguishable Starling DNA.
Evolution and Experimentations
Joe McEwan began his professional life as a career aerospace engineer and carbon composites expert. For twenty years, he worked as a stress-testing engineer. Wanting a change, he learned to build bikes from UK framebuilding legend Dave Yates, and founded Starling Cycles in 2016.
After building part-time out of his garden shed, he went full-time with the company in 2017. The company’s first full suspension was the Swoop, a 27.5-wheeled bike with 155 mm of travel. Then came the Murmur and Beady Little Eye models.
The company has grown through small, concerted decisions. The initial models were UK-made, then made in Taiwan. Now all front triangles are made back in the UK. Hung up in the factory were a few choice examples of Starling’s lineage. I grabbed a few significant models to document.
Looking at Joe’s first bike and what the brand currently produces, it’s easy to see the decade-plus progression. Joe likes his fillets raw as they match the brand’s ethos. Starling makes utilitarian trail bikes. Much in the same vein, Salsa Cycles founder Ross Shafer began building his early mountain bikes with unfinished fillets.
At the time (the early 1980s), if you wanted a beautifully constructed and finished bike, Tom Ritchey and Steve Potts had their fillets filed and sanded to billiard ball smoothness. What guys like Ross and Joe are chasing is a bike that’s meant to be ridden hard without any additional faffing and filing.
K.I.S.S.
While Starling might be best known for full-suspension bikes, Joe’s a fan of the humble hardtail and rigid mountain bikes. I wheeled out the blue cruiser/klunker-inspired Flyer built for Bespoked as a one-off model. The Flyer’s intent later inspired a geared production bike called the Migration. As I was shooting photos of the Flyer, Joe joked, “I called the Migration a commuter bike… which perhaps didn’t help its sales.” But if your commute had a pump track along the way, I could see why it’d be ideal!
The intent with this trip was to be an Inside / Out Shop Visit, where I document the workshop and the terrain in an attempt to paint the entire picture of the brand’s modus operandi. The Inside portion was coming to an abrupt close, as our morning tardiness had eaten away at precious photography time but the Out-ing was about to begin, and boy, I needed a bike ride.
The 120/120 Mini Murmur is the same as my 135/160 V3 Murmur but just built with a shorter travel shock and fork…
But I also needed a bike to ride. As I was getting the shop tour and shooting photos, the team had begun to assemble bikes for Petor and me, asking my weight for shock setup, and for my pedals. The team had me on a Mini Murmur, the shorter travel version of my Murmur V3, which offered a familiar pedal feel while at a considerable reduction in stanchion thickness and travel length.
After briefly discussing the tire beefiness on this demo, Jamie commented that the Mini Murmur is more in line with lighter-weight XC tires. I joked that I want tough and meaty tires on all my bikes, regardless of the model’s intent. Ollie commented, “Downduro,” jokingly. I hooted in agreement.
Leigh Woods Ride
Rather than loading up the cars and driving out to more idyllic and quintessential riding an hour-plus away, I opted to shoot in Joe’s “lunch lap” terrain of Leigh Woods. A short pedal from the wharf of Bristol, Leigh Woods is full of singletrack, ranging from land-managed blues to steep, rooty, off-camber runs on unsanctioned social trails.
Photoshoots are usually a very slow-paced bike ride as I’ll often control the pace, pointing out moments that I feel like would make for a nice photo. Around seemingly every corner, a new vignette into the beauty found throughout Leigh Woods was offered. Ferns, berms, and booters, all interwoven across bandit-cut trail and rooty steeps.
Spanning the phenotypes of the Starling Cycles flock, James was on a Roost hardtail, Joe on his Beady Little Eye, and Ollie on his custom Swoop. The rest of the team was on a mix of Starling full-suspension models, and everyone put on a show.
Our moving time was two hours, and the elapsed time was almost four, just to give you an idea of the riding pace. But the intent of the afternoon was to showcase the terrain that informs the product, and I felt like that was achieved. I felt closer to everyone and was coming to terms with my previous nervousness. I felt like I could be myself and just have fun. The photographer/rider dynamic mocked throughout the afternoon as I blurted out “one more!” – a phrase no rider wants to hear on a shoot.
Everyone commented that when the Leigh Woods trails are muddy or wet, it’s an entirely different experience – a sentiment shared across the entirety of our bike riding and photography road trip. Meanwhile, I kept comparing the trails to the Santa Cruz Campus trails in California: rooty, steep, off-camber, and fast.
Post-Ride Clarity
We finished up the ride and pedaled to the Bristol Wharf, where we ate take-away Mediterranean food. Cari walked over from our hotel to join. I hovered around the group, capturing this idyllic sunny afternoon before scarfing down my meal.
Joe, Cari, and I chatted about the bike industry, how hard it’s been for everyone, and how we’re all seemingly slaving away. Will it get better? Who knows. But there are worse things to be doing with our lives.
As the sun fell behind the buildings across the wharf, Cari and I decided it was time to walk back to the hotel. I left my demo bike with Dex to ghost-ride back to his van.
As we said our parting pleasantries, my mind recalled the afternoon.
These Shop Visits are some of my favorite parts of this job. Most of the people I’ve met who work at companies like Starling Cycles are the purest form of bike people — void of ostentation and down-to-earth, humble shredders. They all wielded their bikes like extensions of themselves.
Paradigm Pushing Bikes
My previous anxieties were perhaps inflated by the acknowledgement that Starling Cycles has fundamentally changed the steel single-pivot market. Placing them on a paradigm-pushing pedestal, the brand proved – and continues to prove – that a modern bike with simple kinematics can endure in a world full of patented and complex linkages.
There’s no doubt that the Mumur completely changed how I looked at mountain bikes and that the brand has ushered in a whole new wave of steel full-suspension bikes from other builders and brands. For instance, would Trek have made that prototype steel full-suspension without the influence of Starling? Hell nah. Even if there wasn’t a distinct connection between the two brands, Starling’s popularity made steel full suspensions seem feasible for brands around the globe.
Maybe that’s giving them too much credit or intentionality. At the end of the day, the Starling crew is just a bunch of rad dudes who like to rip in their spare time. Whenever and wherever they can get it in.
They build bikes they want to ride, and in doing so, they’ve represented a lot of similar-minded people’s desires. Starling isn’t MTB royalty. They’re serfs who shred, and I don’t mean that with even an iota of sarcasm nor disrespect.
A serf is a worker who is underpaid and overworked. While that seems negative, it is a reality. Every builder is underpaid for their craft.
Builders and makers pour their heart and soul into the products they produce. Framebuilders struggle to keep the lights on. The media that documents their hard work do so from a place of love and commitment. No one is getting paid like royalty in this industry. Especially not those making sustainable bikes.
Teams like Starling Cycles have fundamentally changed the mountain bike market for the better. Their modular models are sustainable, repairable, and long-lasting in an era of marginal gains, model year updates, and proprietary tech, that’s damn refreshing. I’m chuffed to have met the team.
The next time you’re in the market for a bike, ask yourself: Do you value the work of these and other hard-working serfs around the globe? If so, support them! We are living in a golden era of steel bikes. Don’t you want to be a part of it?
See everything these lads produce in their small Bristol factory at Starling Cycles.
Many thanks to Joe and the team for spending a day with us.
…and yes, Petor and I have finally gotten some sleep.