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When I first met Mr Benjamin Eio in his Bukit Batok flat, he was a bundle of nerves. 

The 44-year-old sheepishly referred to how much he was "sweating", just as I noticed the beads of perspiration gathered along his temples and the growing dark spots on his denim shirt. 

The sofa he was sitting on had become a literal and metaphorical hot seat for him.

Eio got a bit fidgety as he settled in for our interview and started fanning his face vigorously with his hands, before he summoned reinforcements in the form of an electric blue handheld fan.  

It struck me as quite odd that someone who had spent much of his life in front of cameras, first as the youngest member of a 1990s boy band, EchoBoys, and now as an actor, would be so nervous talking to a reporter.  

Given my zillennial status, I'm too young to remember Singapore ever having a boy band or to have experienced the EchoBoys claiming that title in 1998. 

So I was thoroughly intrigued when Eio recently posted on TikTok pictures of the EchoBoys – dressed in powder blue outfits, nestled together on the floor, beaming their megawatt smiles posing for the cover of their first CD singl Escape  – the track that would become their biggest hit. 

I imagined I would see flashes of his rock star attitude from his teenage pop past melded with the swagger of being a television actor. 
 
As an opening question I asked him what was the best thing about being in the EchoBoys. Sans nerves, he replied that it was about "being a step closer to his dreams" of becoming a singer.

That dream has taken a few left turns over the years but today, Eio's pursuit of becoming a performer has become more focused than ever though in a fresh new artistic direction.

SERENADING HIS REFLECTION

It turns out that singing was always a dream for Eio, who was already staging "performances" in his bedroom, long before his boy band was formed.  

"I always wanted to be a singer ever since I was young," he said. "I would sing every day, almost every day." 

After school, he blasted songs from British boyband Take That while he stood serenading his own reflection.  

In the late 1990s, as a 16-year-old student, Eio saw a casting call for a boy band in the now-defunct tabloid The New Paper.

It was a nationwide audition by Action Theatre, which was creating the group for its musical, Ka-Ra-You-OK?. 

"I just signed up ... I didn't expect anything," said Eio, adding that he was the youngest contestant at the audition. 

It was a spur-of-the-moment decision but he soon found himself among 30 shortlisted contestants learning choreography and preparing one-minute performance pieces.

Despite the impulsive bravado and nonchalance of youth that got him through the door, Eio said the whole audition process, while thrilling, was extremely nerve-wracking.  

Contestants had to dance as well as sing. For Eio, this required ingenuity and lots of improvisation. 

"I'd just take my jotter book and write down the dance steps with stick figures to help me visualise better," said Eio, chuckling at the memory. This habit followed him into his EchoBoys days.

Out of the 30 contestants, four of them were eventually chosen by a panel of judges.

Initially strangers, the quartet of Eio, Alvin Ee, Hatta Said and Winson Leow, aged between 19 and 21, bonded quickly as a result of the strange, high-pressure environment they experienced.  

"We became friends during the competition," he said. "Being so young, it was fun." 

From hanging out between rehearsals to teasing each other over missed notes and awkward dance moves – the long hours hardly felt like work at all.  

Eio recalled standing in front of the mic at a recording studio and feeling that he could hardly believe that this was his life.

FAN FRENZY

After an announcement in Lime Magazine, which is no longer in publication, it was a whirlwind rise to the top for the group, who were given the complete star treatment. 

There was a flurry of magazine shoots and interviews and a steady string of shows they were expected to perform at.

"It really felt like we were the Singapore Backstreet Boys back then," said Eio. 

As we pored over all the memorabilia he has kept in large plastic boxes, I realised he was not exaggerating.

In carefully preserved magazine clippings in plastic folders, I spotted stacks of published interviews and photoshoots of the EchoBoys in coordinated all-white outfits that oozed that late 1990s cool boy-next-door vibe.  

"It felt like a dream come true," said Eio.

"Back in the 90s, you didn't really see any local bands that were prominent or famous in Singapore. So for us, starting out and then being so young, you feel like you're on top of the world."

They released a total of four CD singles, with the song Escape being their first and a crowd favourite, a lovelorn ballad about running away with the life of your life. 

"Won’t you escape with me, I will break you free, I’ll take you all the way to the top of the world and bring you safely down," croons Eio in this song. 

His favourite song was Victims written by radio deejay John Klass. The song was an ambitious endeavour for the group given its complex harmonies and a rap portion that Mr Eio remembers performing with pride. 

It only took these handful of songs to win over legions of fans. 

Some wrote handwritten letters, while other fans made scrapbooks. 

One fan was apparently so enamoured of them that she posted her fingernails in a letter along with a note which read "so that you guys can remember me" – a gesture Eio recounted with both amusement and disbelief. 

The height of the frenzy for the EchoBoys was at the New Year's Eve countdown show in 1998 at Sentosa, where the group was set to perform as one of the headline acts.  

Eio remembered how, as soon as the band pulled into the car park, fans swarmed the vehicle, pressed up against the windows, banging on the doors and shouting their names. 

"It almost felt like that scene in Jurassic Park when the dinosaurs were banging on the door," he said with a laugh.  

At that moment, with the crowd clamouring for photos and autographs, he truly felt like a superstar.

But like any boy band worth their salt, the EchoBoys had haters too. 

Eio remembers the heckles and one in particular from an unidentified voice standing on the Far East Plaza overhead bridge who shouted: "EchoBoys sucks!" as the group walked past. 

At 17, those simple words, that some of us might easily have brushed off, cut deep for him and right through all the glamour and glitz, leaving a mark he couldn't shake off even years later. 

"At that point in time, I also questioned myself: Am I doing something wrong? Am I, are we really that bad, or what? (I had) so many questions in my mind," he said. 

The EchoBoys spent close to three years basking in the spotlight till “life caught up”, said Eio. 

Two members, who were doing National Service, found the rehearsal schedule too taxing on their personal life and also wanted to pursue other careers. Eventually they all agreed it was time to part ways.  

Their millennium countdown performance in 1999 quietly became the EchoBoys' last concert. 

The four of them still keep in touch through social media or WhatsApp and even meet up occasionally. One is an actor while the others have gone to non-musical careers.

SINGING ALL THE WAY

With the EchoBoys having faded into the background, Eio enlisted for National Service and joined the Singapore Armed Forces' performing arts unit called the Music and Drama Company where he spent much of his time honing his skills.  

Still hopeful about chasing his dream of becoming a professional singer, he joined the first season of Singapore Idol when he was 23. He made it only to the top 30 with Taufiq Batisah emerging as the eventual winner.   

At the time, Eio believed that that was the end of the line for him as a singer.  

Shortly after Singapore Idol, he unexpectedly received a call from a music producer asking him to form a boyband with two other men and head to Taiwan to take their shot. 

For six to nine months, the group took Mandarin lessons and rehearsed together, but the group disbanded when the other two members could not commit to the proposed 10-year contract. 

It was yet another false start and abrupt stop, and Eio, even with his young, bright-eyed optimism, was starting to question whether the dream of being a singer would ever pan out. 

"A lot of ups and downs, even though you kind of get into the door, you don't go through. It made me think that maybe this is not meant to be," he said. 

To earn a living, he started singing five nights a week at St James Power Station, which once housed one of the biggest nightlife complexes in Singapore. 

The first few years were fun but the thrill faded quickly. The nights were long and the crowds were more interested in drinking than listening.

"It was the same thing, day in, day out," he said. "I didn't want to live like that." 

Then, in 2012, the tide seemed to be shifting in Eio's favour again.

After being connected to a Taiwanese music producer through a friend, he was asked to send a demo of his music. 

Perhaps it was the pressure of believing this might be his last shot as a singer that made Eio agonise over which song to send. 

All that indecision turned to paralysis and he ended up sending nothing at all. 

"I kept thinking, 'I need to find the perfect song'," he said. "If I have a time machine, I would go back and knock myself on the head."

Thinking the dream was over, he went to the United States to get certified as a vocal coach – a practical pivot that promised stability.

The work brought in good money and a steady stream of students, yet even as he taught others how to find their voices, he felt an uneasy hollowness.

"I realised I was helping other people chase the dream I kept abandoning for myself," he said.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF STAGE

In 2016, after shuttling back and forth overseas for a number of years, Eio found his way back to performing through acting. 

He started with commercials, then minor roles, slowly building his way into long-form �鶹 dramas such as Tanglin, Sunny Side Up, Kin, Provocative and Third Rail. 

It was a steady, patient climb, marked by constant auditioning and learning. 

The turning point came with Tainted, a virtual-production short film. 

He forgot to attach his showreel when he applied, but the director looked him up anyway and invited him to audition for a lead role. 

The character he was auditioning for required unique stunt choreography, which he had no background in, but he went for the audition anyway. 

Two weeks later, Eio got the part. The director later told him: "We really knew we wanted you." 

He took the director's reassurance and belief in him and ran with it.  

More roles followed, including The Devil Is A Part-Time Delivery Man, written specifically for him, and a feature film shot overseas slated for release in 2027.

Acting unlocked something Eio hadn't anticipated and rekindled the same magic and thrill he once experienced as a singer. 

"With singing, maybe I'm given only six colours to paint a picture. 

"But with acting, I feel that I'm given a huge palette of colours to try and do something," he said. 

Now, acting has become his focus and his new dream is to become a Hollywood actor. 

Singing, once a lifelong pursuit, has turned into a hobby for Eio, although he told me that he recently auditioned for a TVB singing competition.

Towards the end of our interview, it finally emerged why Eio was so nervous when we first sat down. 

He admitted that had been a long time since he's spoken in-depth to anyone about his time in the boy band.  

"For a long time, I didn't even want to talk about EchoBoys," he said.  

"When I was younger, because of the hate back then, I felt like that part of my life was a crutch – something I wanted to forget. 

"But as I grew older, I started to realise, this memory is so precious."

As we reached the end of our interview, Eio was gearing up to head to Nanyang Technological University for rehearsals for a student short film. 

He said that while such gigs do not pay much, they were a chance for him to hone his craft and he was happy to take any opportunity where he could get lost in the "magic" of acting.

Eio used to take every disappointment as a closed door.

“When I was younger, whenever I stumbled or something didn’t work out, I treated it as the universe telling me this wasn’t suitable for me,” he said. 

These days, he sees how often people falter on the way to something worthwhile, and how persistence, not perfection, is what moves them forward.

"I wish there had been that kind of reminder back then, that failure isn’t the end of the road, but could actually be a stepping stone to success.”