Chrysalis

The roots of Chrysalis stretch back to a tiny flat in West London in 1967, when former university social secretaries, Chris Wright, then 22, and Terry Ellis, 23, linked their flair for managing and booking bands to form the Ellis Wright Agency.

After a couple of experiences trying to release their bands records via other companies, Wright and Ellis began thinking in terms of their own label. In 1968, they signed a licensing deal with Island Records with the proviso that, should Wright and Ellis’ acts log an agreed number of hits, then the pair would be awarded a label in their own right. The appropriate tally was logged within a year, and a new independent record company –Chrysalis, an amalgam of Wright’s first name and Ellis’ last name– was born.

After buying out Terry Ellis in 1985, Chris Wright sold the Chrysalis Records label to EMI in 1991. EMI was bought out by Universal Music Group in 2012; in 2013, they sold the Parlophone Label Group, which includes Chrysalis, to Warner Music Group. In May 2016 the label was sold to a consortium, Blue Raincoat Music, which included co-founder Chris Wright as Non-Executive Chairman; Blue Raincoat relaunched Chrysalis with both catalogue artists and new signings in 2020 as part of a partnership with Reservoir Media Management at which time Ellis left the company. Since then, the standard Chrysalis logo is primarily used for new titles, and the “Catalogue”-byline logo (Chrysalis Catalogue) was introduced for the label’s back catalogue reissues. Global distribution is via Secretly Distribution.