"Nearly 2,500 bands applied for this year's Virgin Mobile Road to V competition -- and now it's down to just 14 finalists, two of which will get to open the V Festival and play to an audience of thousands in Stafford and Chelmsford on August 16th and 17th. Gigs will be broadcast this summer on Channel 4 from Wednesday 18th June and the expert panel (Dirty Pretty Things frontman Carl Barât, A&R man Sav Remzi, Mags Revell, the promotor of V Festival, NME's Mark Beaumont and Paul Samuels from Crown Music Management) will then decide who wins with the help of the viewers reviews at http://www.roadtov.com/ . You can see a sneaky peak from back stage at one of the Road to V gigs on the link below!