Month: March 2024

Hardtail aficionado Steve, AKA Hardtail Party, has had a Starling Cycles Roost hardtail on review for the last few months – and has just published his review.

The Roost is our stainless hardtail mountain bike frame. It’s designed to be a real all-rounder, for bombing tech or big and pedaly adventures. It’s built with super modern geo but isn’t too slack to be unwieldy. In short, it’s made to be super fun and super versatile. It’s exactly the kind of bike we want to ride. And, to be a little extra special, it’s made in beautiful, raw-look stainless steel.

And how did Hardtail Party feel about the Starling Roost? You’ll have to watch the review for yourself for the full story but (spoilers!) he REALLY liked it.

Here’s just a few of Steve’s comments from the review:

This thing corners like a dream!

Ooh – I like this thing. It is zippy. Wow, I’m surprised, it wants to kind of accelerate everywhere.

This bike is SO special. The guys at Starling really know how to tweak the geometry to get the most out of it. There’s so much special stuff going on here and there’s so much more going on here than it looks like on paper.

It’s for people with a little bit of ADHD and want to play and awaken the inner kid inside of them.

And just in case you missed it last year, Steve also published a First Look video of the Roost back when it first arrived at Hardtail Party HQ. It’s a great video to really dig down deep into the geometry of the Roost and get a feel for what the bike is all about.

You can check out Hardtail Party on YouTube here.

Find out more about the Starling Cycles Roost here – they’re in stock now and ready to ship.

We love getting our bikes featured on The Radavist… but how about when two get featured at once in a double-trouble, two-in-one feature? Now that’s something extra special!

The Starling Cycles Swoop is our super-versatile, steel mountain bike frame with 27.5″ wheels. It can be run in ‘Trail’ mode with 130mm travel or ‘Enduro’ mode with 160mm.

Switch the rear shock, adjust the shock mounts and you can jump back and forth between short-travel shredder and big-hitting, hard charger.

Partners Alex and Nikki both have Swoops of their own, one setup in Enduro and the other in Trail. With the unique situation of two riders on the same bikes in two different setups and both sharing the same adventures, The Radavist saw an opportunity for a double review.

No arguments here!

Nikki “wants a bike that rides well, looks good, and tunes out all the jargon” whilst Alex is a self-confessed “giant bike nerd”.

Despite their differences, both riders were attracted to our bikes because they were tired of mainstream bikes ageing quickly and becoming outdated in just a couple of years. They wanted bikes that looked good, descended well and would last for ages – no quickly out-of-date standards or dated looks.

Their builds are pretty interesting – both set their bikes up for rough, rocky and technical US riding but also to be capable of big rides and some bike-packing adventures. There’s nothing obscenely featherweight, but, both opted to keep the weight down and the rolling speeds up – with John’s Swooping coming in around 32lbs, whilst still running a Fox 34 and 2.4″ tyres.

On the trail, Alex reckons they’re having a blast on their Swoops. His bike is setup with big travel 160/170mm and says:

“Fast downhills are a breeze. The bike goes where you want it to with ease and feels confident. Mine eats up chunk better than hers of course, but they still take it all in stride. They soak up all the chunky and rough corners and love flying into supportive berms and ruts and bouncing right back out”

Nikki is a little more matter-of-fact in her review and Alex reports that:

“Nikki said that going uphill the bike rides “normal” and it “goes up rocks well.” Downhill is “not sketchy.” I have to agree”

Of course, we don’t want to spoil the review by copying and pasting the whole thing here so, we’ll let you read it for yourself right here on The Radavist.

Photos by John Watson / John Weinberg