Scotsman Obituaries: Robin Laing, folk singer-songwriter who was celebrated as the ‘Whisky Bard’
Robin Laing, musician, poet, writer and whisky lover. Born 12 February 1953. Died 5 December 2025, aged 73.
Robin Laing was a proud son of Edinburgh, where he was born in 1953. His family decamped to West Lothian when he was in his teens, but he retained a lifelong attachment to the city.
After leaving Bathgate Academy, Robin took on various jobs around the UK, including working (for one day) in a chicken factory, on oil rigs, in a fashion boutique, road building, in a tax office and as a barman.
He returned to his place of birth to enrol at Edinburgh University, initially for a course in Social Studies and then in Scottish Studies, where he encountered Hamish Henderson. The poet, songwriter, soldier and folklorist who had co-founded the university’s School of Scottish Studies was to prove a strong influence in Robin’s growing interest in folk culture and storytelling.
Robin went on to work with a young offenders’ support service and then with the Scottish Association for Mental Health, where he eventually became director.
But increasingly Robin found his true passion was in singing and songwriting – mostly with whisky as the source of his inspiration. He had developed a taste for it during a spell working at the Arisaig Hotel in the west Highlands as a student, where he had been put in charge of the cocktail bar.
His combined passion for whisky and folk music grew, and finally led him to quit his day job to concentrate on a one-man whisky performance, which he called The Angels’ Share. He played throughout the summer of 1996 in Edinburgh, at what used to be the Tron Tavern next to the Royal Mile, and found that his stories and whisky-inspired songs had an eager audience.
“The Angels’ Share show proved to be popular and that started the whole performing thing for me,” said Robin. “People who came enjoyed it and were asking for CDs, so I put one together.
"Then I realised that once you start collecting whisky songs and poems, there’s a lot of material out there, so I ended up putting together a book of material, and then kept going. Once you’ve got a hobby or a passion for something, you just keep rattling away at it.”
Edinburgh’s Scotch Malt Whisky Society helped Robin’s new career gain momentum. He had received a membership to the whisky club as a Christmas present and when he was planning on performing The Angels’ Share, he found his first willing audience at the Society’s Members’ Room at The Vaults in Leith.
He also started to play a role on the Society’s Tasting Panel, which samples, evaluates and writes names and tasting notes for its one-of-a-kind single cask whiskies. Robin proved to be a natural and went on to serve on the Society’s Tasting Panel for 30 years.
He became a regular performer at whisky festivals and events across Europe and the rest of the world, where he delighted in sharing his passion and celebrating Scotland’s gift to the planet in story and song.
At the time of his death, Robin had recorded 16 albums, nine of them specifically related to whisky, and published five books of poetry and stories.
He said he saw whisky as an emotional trigger, but appreciated that as people we have a full range of emotions – sometimes funny, maybe a bit raucous and also reflective, and his songs and poetry reflected that range.
In a feature for the Society’s Unfiltered members magazine in 2017, to celebrate his two decades on the Tasting Panel, Robin said: “People say they can tell my tasting notes because there’s an element of humour or wordiness in them. First and foremost I’m a songwriter and a poet, so I do things with words that other people maybe don’t, or bring in odd words or different figures of speech. Words are my living and my craft – although I’ve also had people ask me, ‘Who writes this nonsense?’” No one could write entertaining “nonsense” quite like Robin.
As he once said: “In the right place, at the right time, with the right taste…whisky can change your life.” It certainly changed his, and it’s a small measure of comfort to his family and friends that when he died Robin was still busier than ever, doing what he loved. On his Whisky and Death album in 2016, Robin had sung: “We’re scared to live when we’re scared to die, I’ll take whisky and death.”
Robin is survived by his wife Ursula and his children from three marriages, Kerry Watson, Robin-Li Wilson and Ross, Maisie, Hamish and Rowan Laing.
Obituaries
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