From supermarket to stardom: Next of Kin worked as Tesco cleaners

NEXT of Kin stormed through the arena audition stage to go through to the boot camp of ITV's X Factor on Sunday night, and even made judge Nicole Scherzinger cry.

Brothers Nate, Mark and Kieran Bass, from Witham, performed a heart-rending version of Can't Find Me – a song written with their mum, Diane, 61, and dedicated to their family who helped them through the ups and downs of child-stardom.

After shooting to fame in 1999 with a number 13 chart hit 24 Hours From You, the trio, went on a Smash Hits tour with Boyzone, 911, the Spice Girls and Britney Spears.

They were aged between 14 and 18 at the time and dubbed "the British Hanson" due to their youth and long hair, later signing to Universal with Spice Girls manager Simon Fuller showing interest in the boys' talents.

But they were later dropped by the label and left with huge tax bills, while their parents were even forced to sell their family home in Braintree.

Following years of toil in the music industry the brothers – Nate, 32, Mark, 29, and Kieran, 28 – have been thrown back into the limelight after their first two X Factor performances.

After crashing back to reality the boys had to find regular jobs as cleaners in Tesco when the recession hit and also worked in their father's carpet fitting business.

This was the inspiration behind their current bid for success and they want to repay their family's loyalty.

Oldest brother Nate said: "The feedback we've been getting is amazing. You'd think we'd won already. If we can get as much exposure as possible and keep doing what we're doing and show our honest singer-songwriter roots – that's all we want to do really.

"Our story is about a family who's been kicked down. When a lot of people would have given up, we could have got normal jobs and thought no-one really cares about us.

"But we all stuck by it and actually people really appreciate us. Seeing all those people come out and support us, it's been brilliant. I can't thank people enough for following us.

"About four years after the Next of Kin thing we had brief stints with other managers but they couldn't get us off the ground.

"We moved to Maldon and couldn't get any gigs. We couldn't carry on like this so we did shift work at Tesco cleaning for a shift each. We also know how to fit a few carpets too."

The X Factor judges were so enthusiastic about Next of Kin's first audition aired on Saturday night that Nicole Scherzinger was in tears.

She said: "Wait, wait, wait, let me get myself together. Ok, so that kind of touched me. That song was just magic because it was so truthful."

Speaking about the song that moved the judges so much, Nate said: "We wanted to play Can't Find Me because it's a bit country and that's a bit what we're about, but it was a risk because it's an old one of ours but it really struck a chord. But we never would have thought that old song would have had that much of an effect.

"Our mum has always been a lyricist and written loads of poetry in her little diary throughout her life.

"The words were written when she was younger. She was from Liverpool and when she was 20 her dad had just passed away at 42 and later her brother died at 12, so it was just her and her mum and she had to leave to come to London and work in the hospital as a nurse.

"Can't Find Me could really mean anything to anyone but it comes from her emotion and we wrote the music and production around her words in that way."

On Sunday, at Wembley, they wowed the audience with a cover of Lonestar's Amazed.