You’re playing the Jack Rocks stage tonight – are you excited?

 Very excited. It’s good to be on later for once and to play before Black Honey. It’s good!

What have you got in store for everyone?

We’re going to play some songs people haven’t heard in a while and a cover as well.

Nice! Can you give us a hint about what the cover might be?

It’s Young Folks by Peter Bjorn!

That’s an interesting choice, have you put a special spin on it?

 Definitely, it’s completely different but it sound better I think.

How do you decide which songs you play?

We just sit and write out a list of tracks and take away the ones that we feel don’t work for the certain type of event. It’s a bit different for a headline gig on tour but for these ones we just try to play singles and keep it upbeat.

How do you usually differ the set in your own shows?

We try the B-sides and songs people haven’t heard in a while. Our songs are so short. Trying to do a 40 minute set is really hard for us as that’s about 13 songs.

Have you ever considered writing slightly longer songs to fit or are you just true to yourself and you stick with the short ones?

We’ve considered it but… nah! We seem to work well with the short snappy ones.

If you’re good at something, stick with it.

Totally! That’s it. If it’s not broke don’t fix it.

What about support slots – do you change your sets in a similar way to festivals?

Kind of, we find with festivals its first impressions. It might be that half of the people there have never heard you before if they’ve seen your name on a poster and come along. Support slots there’s a big crowd standing there that have never heard you before so you’ve got to hit them with the good songs. At a headline gig, you’ve got slow ones to space it out a bit more.

Are your choices of releases influenced by how well songs go down live?

Not really, although the songs that we’ve decided to put out have worked well live. I think there’s been one occasion where we’ve tried a song live and there’s been a reaction so we’ve thought maybe it should be a single.

You’ve got an album coming out soon as well!

Yes! September 2nd.

Are you excited?

Ecstatic. Buzzing! Since we started this band the main goal was to put out a record that we love and we’ve done exactly that.

How did you decide on the tracklisting, the title and the cover?

The cover was a photograph taken by Connaire’s girlfriend Natalie. Our friend Jim Armstrong said that ‘Want It Need It’ is a track that’s always gone down well in the set so he said “why don’t you just call the record that?” and it made so much sense so we’ve done that. The tracklisting took a while but we got there in the end.

You’re touring straight after it’s out, what have you got prepared for that?

 We’re going to try and play a lot of songs from the album that folk haven’t heard before. So it’s kind of exclusives. There’s a bunch of tracks we’ve never played live before.

Apart from that, what’s next?

We’re re-releasing a version of our song ‘Friend’. After the tour we’re going to headline our biggest show ever in Glasgow at the O2 ABC which is massive. I think in between then, we’re maybe going to do some stuff in Europe as well. Starting next year, we’re going to tour an EP and keep rolling, don’t stop.

The scene in Glasgow is massive, what Scottish bands are you inspired by at the moment?

Right now, Rascal Tin are good. The Kut, Future Glue, The Ninth Wave, The Lapelles, WHITE. We actually came up to the festival with WHITE in the same van, we’re bros.

Thanks for those, I’m going to go and have a listen now!

Declan Welsh as well! All worth listening to, they’re great.

 

Catherine Dowie