When 20-year-old Marcus Mumford decided to give up studying classics at Edinburgh University to pursue a career in music, it might have seemed a bold gamble. But the move paid off handsomely and within two years, on October 2, 2009, his band, Mumford & Sons, released their debut album, Sigh No More. It went multi-platinum and, at a stroke, established the band as the breakout success of the so-called “nu-folk scene.”