LOCAL band Kitty and the Lost Boys has wowed judges and made it through the audition stage of a national competition — Live and Unsigned 2010.

The Tavistock band, and former Radio One Switch's house band of the week, will now have to compete against other talented bands and artists from throughout the country at the live shows of Live and Unsigned 2010, in a bid to prove themselves best in the region.

The band were thrilled to get through the auditions.

Lead singer Kitty Austen said: 'We went to the audition in Cheltenham and literally had to plug in and play.

'We don't usually do nerves but it was an X Factor-style judging panel with no audience, so it was pretty terrifying.'

Live and Unsigned is a music competition for unsigned bands and artists from across the UK. It has attracted more than 30,000 entries in the past three years from all genres of music from heavy metal to rap.

The overall winner of the competition is offered a recording and management contract with Future Music and an investment of up to £30,000 to release their single.

Chris Grayston, events director for Live and Unsigned, said: 'This competition really is worlds apart from X Factor and other TV talent contests — we're all about originality, live ability and credibility. We don't accept demos and everyone auditions live.'

Kitty and the Lost Boys played one of their own songs at the audition.

'We played a new song of ours called Rushing To My Side and they stopped us after about a minute and a half, which we thought meant we'd done badly' said Kitty.

'But afterwards we were called into a side room with two other bands and were told we'd got through to the regional finals.'

Kitty and the Lost Boys are now preparing to perform in front of thousands of spectators and a professional judging panel for the live show in March.

'For the next round we have three and a half minutes to play a medley of one of our own songs and a cover.

'We're not going to tell you what cover we've chosen but it's going to be interesting and we're very excited about it. Fingers crossed for the next round.'

The band will be playing at the Tavistock Inn tomorrow (Friday) at 9pm.