“I want the documentary to be obsolete in five years,” says Blair Young, whose film with fellow Scot Carla J. Easton will close the Edinburgh International Film Festival on Wednesday evening.

Since yesterday: The untold story of Scottish girl bands was selected as the festival’s closing film. It is quite simply a love letter to Scottish women’s music. From the 1960s to the present day, the documentary follows visionary female artists – many of whose stories are lost to history – who emerged on Scotland’s music scene and attempted to break through the glass ceiling.

The documentary is lively and celebratory, but also often offers a grim look at the continued dominance of men in the industry and the blasé ways in which they harassed women throughout much of the 20th century.

Young hopes the film will one day serve as a reminder of how things used to be. “I want people to take away an incredible playlist, but I also want them to look back and say, ‘That’s crazy that they had to make that documentary back then.’ And it can just be the norm that there are just as many women as men starting bands, because if you look at the charts of who gets to release records, it’s clearly a bit unbalanced.”

The documentary began as a kind of “DIY project,” says Easton The Hollywood ReporterThe pair teamed up in 2016 and began randomly interviewing female musicians who were just making a name for themselves.

Easton, who has an artistic background but has been releasing music for nearly 20 years, said: “We started a conversation about how girl bands are portrayed in music videos and then, ‘Well, there aren’t that many girl bands in Scotland,’ and then there was a real ‘hold my beer!’ moment for both of us. It was like someone should make a film about it.”

From ’60s duo The McKinleys to The Ettes, Strawberry Switchblade and Sophisticated Boom Boom (who later became his latest flame), Young and Easton cover a wide spectrum, speaking to the women who fronted Scottish bands such as The Twinsets, Sunset Gun, Hello Skinny, Lung Leg, Melody Dog, Sally Skull and The Hedrons, all of whom have never told their stories in such detail before.

After a Kickstarter campaign funded by fans, the filmmakers eventually managed to raise further funds and obtain archival footage of the young women, some of whom had to give up their careers because music labels feared they would get pregnant and “screw up” a record deal. The theme of motherhood and the resulting interruption of music careers is a key part of the documentary.

“I don’t even know where to begin to explain it,” Easton said. “There is an assumption that anyone who can carry a child will want to do so.” She continued, mentioning her desire to empower female musicians by Since yesterday: “Unfortunately, I think our film shows that success is limited to yourself, simply because of who you are, and has nothing to do with music. We could have talked about girl groups from 2010 to 2020 that are emerging today, but I really wanted to show that any change that is happening is DIY and comes from the grassroots. It’s bottom-up. It’s not top-down.”

One of the songs by ’80s pop duo Strawberry Switchblade, made up of Jill Bryson and Rose McDowall, has made a comeback on TikTok. The single “Trees & Flowers” has been used in nearly 200,000 videos. “I told them last week!” says Easton. “It’s been viewed millions of times. We had a private screening and I was like, ‘You guys have taken off on TikTok!’ and they were both like, ‘Really?’ And I was like, ‘Hey, maybe you want to make money off of this.'”

But the question remains: how did they react when they found out they were closing the EIFF? “We’re a little bit lost for words,” says Young. Easton adds: “The prestige that comes with being the closing film of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, one of the oldest film festivals in the world, is a bit like saying, ‘Okay, something is going to go wrong at some point’… The message you take from that is, ‘Damn, people either really love these bands or they really want to know about them.’ And that’s so hopeful because, let me tell you, it’s bloody hard being a woman in the music industry at the moment.”

Poetically speaking, it is a kind of “homecoming” that Since yesterday: The untold story of Scottish girl bands concludes the EIFF. Young noted: “There were definitely some other festivals that would have been options. And when I thought about it, it never felt right whether we would be accepted or not. Whereas homecoming, as a home start, seemed the most fitting. Plus, Scotland loves music and this is an opportunity to watch films and listen to more music.”

Since yesterday: The untold story of Scottish girl bands will be released in UK cinemas on October 18. The film is produced by Forest of Black and funded by Kickstarter crowdfunder Screen Scotland and BBC Scotland.