Organisers of Sunderland's Kubix Festival answer their critics - and say they'd love to do it again

Thousands of people flocked to Herrington Country Park on Friday and Saturday for two days of pop nostalgia.

On Friday, Ronan Keating headlined a bill which also included East 17, Right Said Fred, B*witched and Peter Andre.

Then on Saturday, things got a little edgier, as Adam Ant topped a line-up which also included The Blockheads, The Undertones, Buzzcocks, Peter Hook & The Light, Fun Lovin' Criminals and Boomtown Rats.

Were you at day one of Kubix Festival? See if you can spot yourself in our picture gallery

Despite a few teething problems - inevitable in a first-time festival - most people had nothing but praise for the festival, and the way it was ran.

The organisers revealed in a statement on their Facebook page that they had made a loss on the event, but said they were proud of the festival they'd put on, and would love to do it all again, with bigger and better bands, if people would support it.

The full statement said: "So, it's been and gone, we hope everyone of you who joined us had the best time possible and enjoyed the great bands we put on - thank you to each and every one of you who supported the event.

"In recent days, there has been some extremely negative posts online and correspondence with us. As well as trying to reply to everyone, we thought we'd get a message out to everyone on here.

Were you at day two of Kubix Festival? See if you've made our gallery of fan pictures

"Despite some views, the organisers behind Kubix Festival are a handful of local lads who were sick of having to travel to see great bands.

"We put everything on the line and tried to do something exceptional in our own area.

"We aren't a multi-million pound company, we don't have a huge team of staff around us and we had no support, financial or operational from anyone in the process.

"Having run the event, not everything was perfect, despite our very best efforts - there were issues with queues on the Friday, we had to run a discounted ticket offer to try to get enough people in to ensure the event went ahead and reduce the level of the losses we sustained and the bar wasn't quick enough.

"We hold our hands up to these issues, we're sorry, and we take every piece of criticism, feedback and advice on board, every single one.

"Ultimately though, these local lads put everything we had behind this event, we've been exhausted for the last 12 months to make it happen and deliver some great bands to the local area. The mistakes that were made, we've learned from and can only correct them in future.

"It wasn't perfect, but it was the very, very best we could deliver. Ultimately, we'd love to do it all again and bring bigger and better names to Sunderland - but if the nay sayers are correct and it was a disaster, then we won't. We'll listen to our customers.

"Come what may, we're phenomenally proud to have delivered such great names to our home city and will always pat ourselves on the back for it.

"I'm sure if we were a large national organisation with huge teams at our disposal, we could have done better - but we want events in the North-East, run by people from the North-East.

"Thank you again for supporting ours and every other local event. Hopefully see you again. Team Kubix."