It’s been a crazy year for British garage-rock band Drenge, originating from a small village in Derbyshire the two Loveless brothers Eoin and Rory released their debut self-titled album in August this year. Now, touring like mad, younger brother Rory takes time out to discuss music tastes, caves, and Americans on cheap cider.

So obviously you’ve known your brother all of your life, when did the two of you start to make music together, and when did you decide you wanted it to be a bit more serious?

Well, we were sort of forced into piano lessons at a young age, and after a bit we sort of got so fed up we moved onto different instruments, when we were like, twelve/thirteen, so it went onto guitar and I started playing drums, and we did a load of awful covers – just bad songs – which was terrible and then about three years ago, we started making more serious, heavier stuff.

We all hear horror stories of brothers in bands, what’s it like working so closely with your brother? Especially with no other official band members to distract from each other?

Yeah it’s alright. We’re used to playing with each other. We’re kind of comfortable with each other in that respect. But yeah, it can get frustrating, we argue, but we always make up afterwards, because you can’t really stay mad at each other because you just see him all the time.

It’s almost easier to make up with a sibling than anyone else.

Yeah.

Your music has been compared to the likes of Nirvana and The White Stripes, but who would you say your biggest musical influences have been, who would you like to be compared to?

Who would I like to be compared to? I dunno, I means it’s an honour to be compared to those bands. I dunno, we’re big fans of bands like Pulled Apart By Horses, Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, Jay Reatard. They’re sort of the bands that helped start this band. Yeah, to be compared to anyone of that calibre is quite an honour.

You’ve been to a lot of festivals this summer and you did the iTunes festival the other day where you opened for the Arctic Monkeys, how was that, opening for such a big band?

Yep, sooo bizarre, it was weird. I don’t know I can’t really, nothing really sinks in until about a couple months afterwards. Its like ‘oh we did actually play Glastonbury’. So yeah, it’s kind of a bit, it’s like almost a dream kind of thing still, at the moment there’s a lot of stuff.

Yeah, you’re in the middle of a massive tour, how is it going? Any good tour stories?

Not really, we’ve been touring with this band called Radkey who are quite young and they’re from America, and they err, drink more than we do, which is crazy, and they go absolutely mad for Strongbow as well. Which is quite strange, I don’t know whether they do cider in America…

If you could tour with anyone, or open for anyone who would it be?

I don’t know, that’s a tough one, I’m really bad at those sorts of questions, I just want to change my answer over and over again once I give one, but I’ll say… playing a show with Pulled Apart By Horses would be amazing.

There’s sort of big thing about reviving small venues at the moment, do you think you’ll do much in the way of small home gigs in Castleton?

Uhh, probably not in Castleton no, though I don’t know, that’s quite a good idea, it’d be good to play like the village hall. It’d be weird. It would definitely be newsworthy doing something like that.Yeah, they’ve started doing a lot of gigs in this cave, as well, that’s right by our house, and we’ve played there as well, which was pretty cool. That’s a great live music venue, I think I should do more stuff like that.

You were saying about the festivals you’d done this summer, which has been your favourite?

Favourite… I’m just gonna go ahead and say Knee Deep festival in Cornwall. I didn’t really know what to expect, but there was a brilliant line up of tonnes of bands who I wanted to see that I’d been listening to for ages like Wolf Alice, The Black Tambourines, Big Deal. And it’s really small, really chilled out. No complications, or unnecessary stuff that you get at larger festivals. Everyone was just, really nice to each other. So yeah, Knee Deep festival, it was in Cornwall aswell which was pretty cool.

That sounds really good. Everyone’s talking about the fact that they just announced the first Glastonbury act the other day, everyone’s getting in a fuss over who’s going to play next years festival. Any hope that you guys will be returning?

I hope so. If we’re not playing, I’ll probably try and get hold of a ticket. It was amazing, we played this year, it was just, incredible. I know the weather was good all weekend and it might not be the same next year but, I don’t think that really matters, it was such a good atmosphere there. I’ll be there either way.

Sounds good. Other than playing in caves and Glastonbury, what do you think is going to come next for Drenge?

I don’t know, I hope it’s a bit of time off to write some more songs and carry the process on.

Joey Colley