James had been working for 18 months on material with George Michael for his upcoming album before this was brought to such a sad and sudden end.
He currently makes production music for a host of clients including Channel 4, The Discovery Channel, MatterPR,Optica, Evolution, Sick Muse,Felt Music, Audio Wallpaper, Chroma, Music For Production. His music has been featured on a variety of TV programmes and adverts.
He was signed to EMI with the rock band Grace for 3 years. They released the critically acclaimed album Detours and performed over 200 shows. This was followed by a large stylistic departure in the form of a one year world tour with Il Divo, this tour was Il Divo’s largest worldwide tour, encompassing 135 shows, 81 cities and 32 countries.
He has recorded around 10 live concert DVD's and played a whole host of TV shows including David Letterman, Jay Leno's Tonight Show and around 10 TOTP performances. The Il Divo live album James played on, 'An Evening With Il Divo : Live in Barcelona' debuted at no 1 in 9 countries and sold over 3 million copies in 2 months.
A few years ago he started a free Music Festival in his local area aimed at promoting the arts and local creative projects and raising money for charity. It runs yearly.
He has an Americana style band with Irwin Sparkes from the Hoosiers that's in the closing stages of finishing an album. It's influenced by the Band, Jackson Browne, Beck and The Allman Brothers.
He founded a Music School in 2017, haytohms.co.uk , which provides home visits from music teachers aimed at providing a quality bespoke approach to teaching. The school now has 160 plus pupils and 50 teachers.