Q1 How did you start out making music?
We've all played in various forms since being teenagers. Rich had been writing since college, but we really started taking it seriously as a band about three years ago. We practiced in our little studio in Crouch End a few times a week and started playing wherever would have us in London. It definitely took a while before we gelled properly as a band, but it helped that there are a few other bands and artists that we all really dig - Neil Young and Radiohead for starters. We've definitely come along way from four guys locked in a room bashing out lines to each other. Hopefully we're a bit more thoughtful now of what it takes to make a song work live.

Q2 What inspired your latest single?
A few things, although maybe it's better to leave that up to people to decide for themselves. Sometimes we've had our own idea of what someone else's song was about, only to find out it's really about something different...

Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
It takes various forms but generally Rich will come in with the bare bones of a song and then we start working it up and arranging its shape until something fully formed emerges. Some songs come together really quickly and others go through different styles, shapes and arrangements for months. It's usually the better ones that fall in place quickly for some reason. Or we'll take various bits from different half ideas and something new will emerge.

Q4 What artists have influenced your work?
It's really tempting to be inspired by what's currently on everyone's iPods but most of the time it's a case of trying to forget all the great songs out there and find something new. It's very easy to play a song in the style of one of our musical heroes but much harder to come up with something genuinely original, or at least to conceal your influences enough that no one notices!

Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
Have you paid for that?! Nah seriously, we'd hope they like it, I suppose, and feel engaged by it and feel some kind of reaction to it. There's nothing worse than putting on an album and then forgetting it's on. We're not into making background music, each song hopefully has its own flavour and the styles are different enough across the album to keep people listening. We're not into making an album in one specific style or genre and then suddenly flipping it for album two. Hopefully the songs are varied enough to not paint us into that corner.

Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest single, and for the future?
To get a proper job and settle down! No, I guess to make more songs, more albums, and to create a body of work we can look back on and be proud of when we're old and grey. It's weird because our first album was written and recorded a while ago, yet we'll be playing it on the road for another two years or more. I think we're all itching to get back into the studio and make album two bigger and better as soon as possible. Also, we have played a few European festivals already this summer too, and we're all totally into getting in the van and heading off to the sunnier parts of Europe. Hopefully our agent is reading this!

published july 2009