Viola Beach single Swings & Waterslides enters top 20

As The Telegraph reports, the wreckage of the band’s vehicle was sailed over by the ship – the M/T Tellus, operated by Sirius Shipping – which weighs 7,500 tonnes when fully loaded, shortly after the auto dropped over 25 metres from the bridge, which had opened to allow the ship to pass through.

According to the Daily Telegraph the latest disclosure raises the possibility that they could have survived the initial fall and instead been killed by the oil tanker. Swedish police have indicated this might explain the extreme wreck the auto was in on recovery.

In Sweden, the band are now the highest placing non-Swedish act on Spotify’s Viral Top 50, which looks at the most-shared tracks in the country.

‘It is with great sadness that we will not be able to see them grow from the spark that they are now, into the raging fire that they so desperately desired to become’.

A spokesman for the shipping company said no one realised the auto had fallen from the bridge. “But the outcome for the auto would probably not have been different whether the crew had noticed it or not”, he says.

The organisers of Liverpool Sound City have confirmed they will be paying a special tribute to Viola Beach at this year’s festival in May.

Kris Leonard, 20, River Reeves, 19, Jack Dakin, 19, Tomas Lowe, 27, and their manager Craig Tarry, 33, all died after their auto ended up in a canal in Södertälje, near Stockholm on Saturday.

They released their debut single Swings & Waterslides last summer, and the follow-up Boys That Sing came out last month. The band were in Sweden to perform their first overseas gig.