Early Days
Craig Robert Nicholls was born on 31 August 1977 and grew up in Sydney, New South Wales. Terry Nicholls, his father, was the guitarist and vocalist in a 1960s group, The Vynes. Later Terry worked as an accountant for Sony Music Australia. Nicholls' older brother is Matt, he has an older sister and a younger sister, Jessica. Terry taught him to play guitar during childhood. He preferred listening to The Beatles, painting art works and skateboarding. He grew up as "a loner... I never socialized. I stayed at home and listened to music all day. Music became a mystical world".
Nicholls attended Marist College Penshurst until he dropped out of high school during Year 10. He enrolled in an art school for six months to study painting. He supported his ambition to be a musician by working in a fast food service job at a local McDonald's restaurant in South Hurstville. There he met future band mates, bass guitarist, Patrick Matthews and drummer, David Oliffe. To form a quartet named Rishikesh, Nicholls invited his school-mate Ryan Griffiths to join on guitar. Nicholls provided the band's name, Rishikesh, from the city in India where The Beatles had attended an ashram. Reviewing early gigs, newspapers would misprint the name as 'Rishi Chasms', so Nicholls decided to change it to The Vines – a reference to his father's group.
Nicholls had never written songs until The Vines started playing gigs. Early performances included playing for backyard parties, and a regular spot on a local radio station. They gathered a following in Sydney and eventually reached the notice of Capitol Records. Once he started writing songs, he loved it and continued to write more, the writing was a good outlet for him. Nicholls wrote "Factory", the band's first single, which became NME's Single of the Week in November 2001. At the ARIA Music Awards of 2002, The Vines won 'Best Breakthrough Artist - Single' for "Get Free", which was also written by Nicholls. At the APRA Awards of 2003 he won the 'Breakthrough Songwriter Award'.
Several of Nicholls' paintings are used for The Vines' releases including for the albums Highly Evolved, Winning Days (self portrait only), and singles "Highly Evolved", and "Outtathaway!". Nicholls' work on Highly Evolved was nominated for "Best Cover Art" at the 2002 ARIA Awards.
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