Nikolai Fraiture

Nikolai Fraiture born November 13, 1978 in New York City) is the bassist for the New York City-based band The Strokes. He is French-Russian and speaks fluent French. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father a security guard. He and five other relatives all lived in a two-bedroom apartment. Fraiture also has a sister named Elizabeth, who is 13 years younger than he is and an elder brother named Pierre. He attended kindergarten and elementary school with best friend and future bandmate Julian Casablancas. He later went to Lycée Français De New York for high school.

Although Fraiture had been interested in music since childhood, he did not begin playing bass until he was 19. His grandfather had bought him a bass guitar as a graduation gift but Fraiture gave it to Casablancas. It was not until one year later, when he contracted Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever at a New Orleans youth hostel, that he picked it up and began to play seriously. At the time, he was attending Hunter College with future bandmate Nick Valensi, who wrote an article about Fraiture's coping with the illness in the school newspaper. Shortly afterwards, he joined his friends Casablancas, Valensi, and Fabrizio Moretti in forming a band. He met Albert Hammond, Jr. at later rehearsals.

Fraiture is married to an Englishwoman named Ilona, with whom he has one daughter, Elysia, born in the summer of 2004. Of all the Strokes, he is often considered the most soft-spoken. He resides in New York and is often seen cycling around the area.

Fraiture plays a Fender Jazz Bass (the same model his grandfather bought him) and a Rickenbacker. Lately he has also been seen playing a Fender Precision Bass and a Music Man StingRay.

Fraiture is currently working on his side-project "Nickel Eye", with Regina Spector and Nick Zinner from Yeah Yeah Yeahs