>>1747690from 2010-15ish I was a cloth tape fanboy and have ridden a lot with it. It's fine if you don't care about having padding on your bars, and if you want to color match exactly that's definitely possible if you're going to coat your bars in shellac to make the tape tough and waterproof - shellac comes in different shades and you can adjust the darkness/gloss of the final result with how many coats you add and how thickly you apply it. Also, it's one of the cheapest kinds of bartape since it can last for years and years (just add more shellac when it shows wear), and if you're really cheap you can get twill tape from a fabric store for pennies and it's the same thing, just without any adhesive backing.
But you should know the downsides are that it's relatively challenging to wrap, shellac is actually not the easiest thing to work with (you need to let it dry, usually overnight, when coating bars), and when your bars get wet they'll be smooth and slippery unless you go pretty light on the shellac. And again, very little padding but hey it's better than plastic tape at least...
