Fibre is bringing back what it does best: old school, house-fuelled nights of glamour which used to mark the end of every working week. Rod McPhee got the lowdown on their latest crowd-puller, Stereolyrical.

REMEMBER when Friday was a night you looked forward to? When you actually got dressed up and hit the weekend running?

"I don't know quite why that changed" said James Wheater general manager of bar Fibre "I don't know whether it's got something to do with the credit crunch or something else.

"But there definitely seems to be fewer people out and about on a Friday, and it's a different kind of crowd too - you can tell the difference just by comparing them to the people who are out on a Saturday.

"What people do come out just don't seem to get dressed up as much, they aren't always out for a big one and somehow that seems a real shame, particularly as there's plenty of top club nights on most Fridays."

It wasn't always this way. Four years ago when Wheater became a manager at the New Briggate nightspot the place was packed virtually all weekend.

But across the city there's frequent, worrying lulls between the after-work surge of drinkers and those stalwarts who head out for some late night clubbing.

With that in mind Wheater and the team have launched their first in-house promotion, Stereolyrical, which aims to get the old crowd back out again - so how, exactly, is he going to do it?

"At the moment there's not really a reason for people to come out earlier on a Friday, certainly not to a bar, so this aims to give them a reason." he said.

"It will all be about glamour and fun and a bit of old fashioned debauchery. We're going to have some sexy bus boys and shooter girls serving drinks and we want to develop a night that people expect something from.

"In the past we've always left Fibre to be it's own brand and that's worked quite well but perhaps this is the way forward, to develop complementary nights which stand out."

They'll also be giving the whole place a rather sexy, individual touch from the uniforms to the decor - but it isn't just about tinkering around the edges.

Now that Black Out, which used to take over Fibre in the early hours, has moved to a regular slot at sister club Mission, the way is clear to totally change the music policy. Au revoir electro and welcome back uplifting house.

Wheater said: "Electro is great but it has been absolutely done to death now and apart from anything else it's the kind of sound better suited to a club rather than a bar.

"And I think that was one of the mistakes that's been made in the past, people come to a bar to have a drink, have a laugh and feel uplifted almost and that was something we always achieved with our old music policy."

Helping make the change is Katie Luv a 27-year-old old-school DJ who's taken to the decks at a string of venues across Yorkshire, but Wheater experienced her first hand during a performance at The Space.

"You could see the immediate response when she played her stuff" he said. "People just started smiling and got up and danced and if we can bring some of that back to Fibre then great.

"And what I love about her is that she doesn't care about what the current thing is or the next big thing is - she just does HER thing and people really like it. House might not feel that fashionable at the moment but it does get such a response.

"And we think that will set us out because everywhere does stereotypical electro, which suits your big venues, but we'll get the sound just right for a glamorous bar.

"And that's why we've called it Stereolyrical because we're all about that brand of happy, vocal house. And, as our catchline says, we're anything but stereotypical."

Stereolyrical starts next week at bar Fibre, Lower Briggate, Leeds, every Friday from 9pm to 3am. For more information visit www.barfibre.com