Biography

Mert Tolay was born in Türkiye in 1979. At 13 he wanted to play guitar and ended up in the metal scene as a bassist. Looking for more emotion and melody, he later moved to Spanish and flamenco guitar and studied it for six years.

His direction changed in 1996, when he heard Robert Miles’s “Children.” In 1998, Paul van Dyk’s “Another Way” and Planet Perfecto’s “Bullet in a Gun” introduced him to trance, and in the years after, Armin van Buuren became a major influence.

He started as a trance radio DJ in mid-2006. Over the next two years he hosted 76 episodes of his weekly show Trancelation on AH.FM, and he also made a short-lived monthly show, Longest Highway, on ClubDV.FM, which ended in late 2007. From 2009 to 2019 he hosted 300 episodes of Torque Shaft on ODU.FM, and during the same years he published the monthly Mert Tolay Podcast on iTunes.

His first production, “Brotherhood,” came out in 2009 on Andromeda Recordings. He keeps working on his production technique and on developing his own sound. Away from music, he works as an Industrial Engineer in Italy, where he lives with his wife, and he is preparing for live trance performances.