Firstly for those who may not know, tell us something about you, the band and what you’re about.
We play music that is hard to describe most of the time… not because it’s good or anything special…we’re just rubbish at defining it.
You’ve had a fantastic 12 months – how does it feel to have gained so much attention so quickly?
Surprised. It has been a really pleasant surprise. I guess things have happened relatively quickly but for us it has felt so steady… in a nice way I think.
Obviously you’ve put a series of different types of material out there so far – how will you feel when you have officially laid down an album?
Terrified. We have been working on it for such a long time which has been really nice and quite relaxed… but because we’ve had so many deadlines that have been pushed back we are constantly in the run-up to it being finished… which has been fairly stressful. We will be very relieved when it’s done.
Concerning the (aptly named) Other People’s Heartache mixtape, we were particularly interested by your choice of songs to cover. What thought process led to recording the tracks you did?
The first song we recorded for it was a cover of ‘What Would You Do?’, the City High song, and that was a song that started last year as a bit of a joke… we were quite lazy playing live… and if we ever had to do an encore (which was rare) we would use these terrible wedding band cover versions… which led to us thinking it would be fun to try and record it. It became (kind of) like an album.
And as we get closer to the release of ‘Bad Blood’, we noticed the video sparked lots of different interpretations. What was the real inspiration behind it all?
The song was always meant to be relatively open to interpretation. When I wrote it I was thinking about how when you’re younger, friendships are really important. They help to form the person you become and you can so easily lose touch with those people which is always very weird but also quite normal. With the video we wanted something quite cinematic and mysterious which also reflected the mood in the song without strictly defining it.
Moving on to the Olympics – have you thought about taking part in any of the events on the Olympic Fields we have at Y Not this year?
We’ll be up for that! We were walking past earlier and Kyle was like ‘Hey guys lets do this it’ll be fun!’
In terms of Bastille live – if there was one thing you would want fans to take from the experience, what would it be?
Without sounding really cheesy, we would want fans to have a good time… We try to keep our shows as energetic and entertaining as possible while giving a weightier, beefier interpretation of the songs in the live setting.
If you could collaborate with one artist/band who would it be and why?
Rihanna… Let’s get this ball rolling now! We’d love to work with Rihanna. We’re still a little bit obsessed with SBTRKT too and think it would be wicked to get a remix with them.
Can you give us a release date for the album?
We could… but as we say it keeps getting pushed back. Hopefully at the beginning of next year!
And finally, when the album is officially released, what can fans expect next from Bastille?
Hopefully, another album! We would like to tour a lot too… and it would also be really good to keep making new music as well… hopefully we can make another mixtape and keep things ticking along!