Russell Lissack and Kele Okereke first met in 1998 in Essex. They saw each other again in 1999 at the Reading Festival and then decided to form a band. Bass guitar player Gordon Moakes joined after answering an advertisement in "NME", and drummer Matt Tong joined after an audition. They were called Union at the start, the band chose to call themselves Bloc Party in September 2003 as another way of saying "block party". The band have said in interviews that the name was not supposed to be related to the Soviet Bloc or the Canadian political party Bloc Québécois. However, Gordon Moakes said on the group's official Internet forum that the name was made by joining the eastern "Blocs" and the western "parties", in the political sense. Moakes also said that the name was not chosen only for this reason, but because it "looked, sounded, and seemed fine, so we went with it."