A BAND which set up a crowdfunding page after having their £7,000 musical gear stolen have decided to ditch the plan.

Shooty and the Bang Bang's kit was stolen from bassist Sam Fraser's car while it was parked in St Mary's car park, in Colchester on December 28.

It happened after the four-piece band had played a charity gig at V Bar, in High Street.

The group had initially ruled out crowdfunding to replace the instruments but decided to go ahead with the drive last week.

But yesterday a statement from the band said the crowdfunding, which had amassed about £1,500, had been cancelled.

It read: "After much deliberation, we have decided to cancel our efforts to crowd fund the money to replace our gear.

"We are truly grateful to all that pledged and shared the page but it seems our initial reluctance to crowd fund was justified.

"Unfortunately we predicted we wouldn’t feel comfortable taking money, even if we did offer incentives so it felt as though we were working for it, and we were right.

"The reason we didn’t crowd fund to start with is there are lot of causes out there far more worthy of your hard earned cash."

It added: "We would like to state, though, that we were never lackadaisical about the safety of our equipment.

"We stupidly thought that covering it with a sheet in the back of Sam’s car and leaving it in a car park, which advertises its quality CCTV surveillance system on several signposts, would be safe. We were wrong. Please don’t leave your gear in your vehicles."

The band members added they had been "very sombre" and are "gutted" not to be able to play music for the foreseeable future.

They have asked for anyone who was planning to add to their pot to instead donate to help a four-year-old from Kent get to the USA for life-changing surgery for an aggressive cancerous tumour.

To donate, click on http://bit.ly/2jJfZBA.