As far as I'm concerned a hamster is a small furry animal with a short tail, beady eyes and a couple of big, pouchy cheeks. Mr Hamster is famous for his qualities as a pet and his ability to test the latest drugs for possible mind-bending side effects. It wasn't until recently, however, that I learnt of a particular hamster's ability to wield a mean drumstick, play a mean guitar and sound out a good tune.

This Hamster is a local indie band made up of King-lok Fong (bass), Siu-fai Cheung (guitar, vocal), Henry Chan (drums) and Mabel Leung (cello). The band, who won the Best Vocal prize in last year’s Asian Beat Band Competition, are similar to the furry laboratory creatures in that their music is also something of an experiment. The only difference is that Hamster have full control over their destiny, something our hairy little friends do not.

Experimentation leads to success, the band hopes, only after a long process of trial and error. Fong, a biology teacher, says: "There is no right or wrong in music. It's only a mixture of sound waves. We try different combinations and realise that the failures are simply a process of eliminating particular combinations that don't work. We took the name Hamster to reflect this music attitude."

Hamster were originally a trio with only Fong, Cheung and Chan. They started playing eight years ago when the local indie scene was suffering from Grunge and metal saturation. For this reason they are fully conversant with the metallist style of Metallica, the grunge of Nirvana, the classic rock of Deep Purple and Pink Floyd and the rock n' roll of The Beatles. They are even adept in the post-modern rock of Radiohead.

yut, driven by a rebellious instinct, Hamster felt obliged to escape from the mainstream and so started experimenting with other possibilities. Chan explains: "We call our music 'pop' as we don't have a fixed style." Six months ago the trio invited cellist Leung to join the band, hoping that a new combination of sound waves will offer a more diverse yet harmonious live performance. So far, it has.

"The sound produced by a guitar, drums and a bass is rather rhythmic and raw. That's why we have added a stringed instrument, to add a more textured gloss,” Cheung explains. Like the contrast of ying and yang, the graceful and melancholic tunes derived from the cello provide an equilibrium with the bombast of the rest of the band. "However," says Leung, "adding a cello can, undoubtedly, enrich the music, but the real feeling can only be derived from the music itself rather than the individual instruments."

But even with line-up changes aside, the band's aim to keep experimenting can be seen in their recent change of direction. While Chan has left his skins momentarily to explore the keyboard (his "library of sound"), Cheung has taken a fancy to primitive instruments such as the ocarina, a handmade wind instrument producing a selection of hauntingly hollow sounds. The results are yet to be heard, but it all seems to be promising.

Feedback at the moment is, like the music itself, rather diverse. Fans of less conventional music using non-traditional instruments tend to enjoy their easy-listening tunes, while critics and fellow bands tend to appreciate Hamster’s unorthodox musical arrangements. Others prefer to cling to their pigeonholes, labelling the music boring for its lack of solos or "normal" structure. Fong suggests that, “kids play music because they think it's cool. Our music is not about speeding up and down the guitar fretboard. Music isn't the means to vent our anger anymore. The notion of change and the generic concepts found in between the notes are what we consider more important. It has to touch people.” Leung, however, disagrees, saying: "Making music, for me, is about sharing. It doesn't need to touch people. We only display the message; how much you get out of it is out of our control."

So what is the message? The quartet explain their agenda tactfully. "We're a group of Christians," Cheung says. “Our music is a labour of love and we hope to spread this message to others." I know what you’re thinking, but, don’t worry. Hamster do not preach. Instead they draw on analogies and metaphors to talk about love and friendship. Ex-memory, for example, is an analogy between stars and friendship. The distance between two stars may seem close on Earth, but in actuality they're several hundred light years apart. Stars can also be seen as a metaphor for our dreams, according to Cheung, who talks about their twinkle often being covered by the bright city lights. Even if you’re able to see a star, you can't look at it too long as its shine will make your eyes sore.

Like dreams hidden by a city's lights or friends separated by space, Hamster find themselves apart from the rest of the local music population, adrift in a scene desperate to pigeonhole their shape-shifting genesis. Hamster: unlike their namesakes, they will forever be free. ?

Joyce Siu