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Submission declined on 1 May 2026 by Paul W (talk). This draft's references do not show that the person meets Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion for people. The draft requires multiple published secondary sources that: provide significant coverage: discuss the person in detail, not brief mentions or interviews lacking independent analysis; are reliable: from reputable outlets with editorial oversight; are independent: not connected to the person, such as interviews, press releases, the subject's own website, or sponsored content. Please add references that meet all three of these criteria. If none exist, the subject is not yet suitable for Wikipedia. This draft lacks inline citations. Wikipedia's verifiability policy requires that all content be supported by reliable sources. We require inline citations (footnotes) to show which source supports which specific statement. You must place an inline citation directly after: quotations; any material whose verifiability is likely to be challenged or is contentious; any material about living people. Please edit your draft to support your statements with inline citations. Learn how to create inline citations in the: Source Editor: Introduction to referencing with Wiki Markup. VisualEditor: Introduction to referencing with VisualEditor. If you would like to continue working on the submission, click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window. If you have not resolved the issues listed above, your draft will be declined again and potentially deleted. If you need extra help, please ask us a question at the AfC Help Desk or get live help from experienced editors. Please do not remove reviewer comments or this notice until the submission is accepted. Where to get help If you need help editing or submitting your draft, please ask us a question at the AfC Help Desk or get live help from experienced editors. These venues are only for help with editing and the submission process, not to get reviews. If you need feedback on your draft, or if the review is taking a lot of time, you can try asking for help on the talk page of a relevant WikiProject. Some WikiProjects are more active than others so a speedy reply is not guaranteed. How to improve a draft Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia – a basic overview on how to edit Wikipedia. Help:Wikitext – how to use the markup Help:Referencing for beginners – how to include references Wikipedia:Article development – how to develop your article Wikipedia:Writing better articles – how to improve your article Wikipedia:Verifiability – make sure your article includes reliable third-party sources You can also browse Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Good articles to find examples of Wikipedia's best writing on topics similar to your proposed article. Improving your odds of a speedy review To improve your odds of a faster review, tag your draft with relevant WikiProject tags using the button below. This will let reviewers know a new draft has been submitted in their area of interest. For instance, if you wrote about a female astronomer, you would want to add the Biography, Astronomy, and Women scientists tags. Add tags to your draft Editor resources Easy tools: Citation bot (help) | Advanced: Fix bare URLs Declined by Paul W 37 days ago. Last edited by ~2026-16430-75 13 days ago. Reviewer: Inform author. This draft has been resubmitted and is currently awaiting re-review.

Submission declined on 16 February 2026 by Thilio (talk). This draft appears to contain text generated by a large language model (such as ChatGPT). You cannot use LLMs to generate article content. LLM-generated pages with certain obvious signs of being machine generated may be deleted without notice. These tools are prone to specific issues that violate our policies: hallucinations: they often invent false information and cite non-existent references. unencyclopedic tone: they tend to be vague, promotional, or essay-like, rather than neutral and factual. copyright issues: they may closely paraphrase existing text, leading to copyright violations. Instead, only summarize in your own words a range of independent, reliable, published sources that discuss the subject. See the advice page on large language models for more information. This draft reads like a resume or curriculum vitae. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a professional networking website or a place to promote yourself or your services. We also strongly discourage writing about yourself. Articles about people must meet Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion for people. The draft requires multiple published secondary sources that: provide significant coverage: discuss the person in detail, not just brief mentions or routine announcements; are reliable: from reputable outlets with editorial oversight; are independent: not connected to the person, such as interviews, press releases, the subject's own website, or sponsored content. Please add references that meet all three of these criteria. If none exist, the subject is not yet suitable for Wikipedia. Declined by Thilio 3 months ago.

• Comment: Lacks citations for numerous assertions. Paul W (talk) 14:42, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

• Comment: Please rewrite to remove promotional lang and reduce trivial details. See WP:NPOV and WP:NOTCV CONFUSED SPIRIT(Thilio).Talk 16:41, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Stuart Cassells (born 1979) is a Scottish musician, entrepreneur, and whisky industry executive. He is most famous for founding the bagpipe group The Red Hot Chilli Pipers, which mixes traditional bagpiping and rock, and he was the 2005 BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year.

After retiring from professional performance due to a neurological condition (task-specific focal dystonia), he moved into the Scotch whisky sector, and has held senior roles at The Famous Grouse, The Glenrothes, The Macallan, and Gordon & MacPhail.

Born in 1979 in Falkirk,^[1] Cassells started his career as a piper aged eight. His father attended Queen Victoria School and learned Highland dancing, but had always loved the bagpipes and took his son for lessons with the Wallacestone and District Pipe Band^[2], the oldest civilian pipe band in the world, formed in 1887.

From the age of 12, Cassells junior learnt his craft by playing at Scottish entertainment nights for American tourists^[3]. He won several junior piping competitions^[2], and featured on his first CD recording with other young pipers in 1995 called Young Pipers of Scotland^[4] Greentrax.

Cassells achieved grade one status in his early teens^[5] with Torphichen and Bathgate Pipe Band, and then, at the age of 15, he joined the Vale of Atholl Pipe Band playing alongside his idol, the late Scottish piper^[5] Gordon Duncan. "To get direct instruction and guidance from Gordon rapidly improved my musicality as a bagpiper and I began to gain a reputation myself as being ‘innovative’ and entertaining at recitals. However I was never the innovator, I was merely the student," Cassells said^[5].

Gordon's achievements include incorporating the bagpipes into a rendition of ^[6] AC/DC's Thunderstruck.

Cassells at the age of 18 started his first business called Scottish Bagpiper, and was given a grant from the Princes Scottish Youth Business Trust (PSYBT) to buy a computer.

His business grew, and he served as resident piper at^[7] Cameron House Cameron House Hotel at Loch Lomond and Stirling Castle.

He joined the first cohort^[8] to study for a degree in Scottish bagpipes (2001) at the music school the RSAMD (now known as the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) in Glasgow.

In between his studies, he started the Red Hot Chilli Pipers in 2002, after seeing a gap in the market for a band that could take bagpiping into the 21st century.

The band’s name in fact came about after Cassells’ partner at the time thought a Red Hot Chilli Peppers CD was a Scottish bagpipe CD,^[9] and filed it away in their collection along with others of the same genre.

Key moments for the band include its bagpipe version of Coldplay’s song Clocks, and playing onstage at T in the Park with headliners The Darkness in 2004 after David Bowie pulled out of the slot^[10]. The Pipers played on Darkness song Love On The Rocks With No Ice^[10].

Cassells in 2005 won the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician Of The Year award, which saw him invited to Buckingham Palace, where he found himself talking to a group of fellow guests comprising Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and Brian May^[11]

He also met Phil Collins, a fellow bagpiper, and offered to write the sleeve notes for the singer and drummer's upcoming debut solo album^[3].

The Red Hot Chilli Pipers' achievements include in 2007 winning the BBC talent show When Will I Be Famous?, touring the world including countries such as China, and being named Scotland’s Live Act of the Year in 2007 and 2010 at the Scots Trad Music Awards^[12].

Cassells has recorded music for the soundtrack to film Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire, and secured famous fans such as^[3] Paul McCartney and Chris Martin.

Cassells developed a medical condition called task-specific focal dystonia^[13], which is referred to as musicians’ cramp and affects one in 200 musicians.

After consulting renowned specialists, and undergoing treatments such as Botox injections in his arm and taking a drug used to treat Parkinson’s disease, he made the decision to leave the band in August 2011^[3]. “We were headlining at the Milwaukee Irish Fest, playing to a crowd of around 40,000. I was thinking about how I’d started the band in my bedroom, and now felt like a good time to stop.”

The band has carried on, as a franchise, while “bagrock"^[14] is now an established genre.

Cassells moved into the Scotch whisky industry, and was accepted onto the Saltire Fellowship^[15] in 2012, securing an “experiential” MBA from Babson College in Massachusetts.

When he returned, he secured a three-month placement with The Famous Grouse team^[3] – at Edrington.

He was then in 2014 named general manager of The Famous Grouse Experience and Glenturret Distillery^[16]. After he spearheaded its relaunch, including a Michelin-starred restaurant, he won the Icons of Whisky Global Visitor Attraction Manager of the Year 2016.^[17]

He in 2018 joined The Macallan, where he was global head of private client relationship management, and then moved to Gordon & MacPhail where he became global head of sales - generations^[16].

However, he has maintained a presence in the music scene, for example serving as MC at^[18] annual folk, roots, and world music festival Celtic Connections that is held in Glasgow.

Cassells is married with two sons. He suffered a stroke at his son’s second birthday party,^[19] which turned out to be an early sign of a hereditary type of dementia.

He has said^[20]: “The shock and trauma of having a stroke at 43 was devastating to me and my family. I thought strokes only happened to older people, but I was proved wrong."

It prompted him to lose weight and get fitter, and he also now works to raise awareness of how to reduce the chance of suffering a stroke^[20].