Q: I love the vibe and the sound of “Staircase”! Who are some of your biggest influences?
SINS: We all have really varied tastes, but there are some artists we all have a mutual love for. All of us love Oasis, Arctic Monkeys, The Strokes and The Rolling Stones, so I guess that’s the four cornerstones to our collective tastes – but then individually those wouldn’t even make it into our top five artists, so it’s quite interesting in the way it all comes out in our tunes. When we write and record now, I think we’re always just inputting our own flavours to drum sounds and guitar tones that either come unconsciously from whatever we’re listening to at the time or purposely to invoke an emotion to bolster the song and its lyrical themes. Either way, it all seems to work out for us more and more as time goes on.
Q: Can you tell us more about “Staircase”? What is the song about?
SINS: The song was birthed on the live scene and honed bit by bit at various band practices over a few months, it’s one of our absolute favourites to play at gigs for that reason I think! Lyrically the songs about a haunting, self-implosive and irreparable relationship, that the narrator can’t quite seem to get out of. The girl of his affection is distant and cold, and he’s trying to break through it all in vein. I think that’s pretty much the gist but there’s some nice imagery and metaphor to create other interpretations too.
Q: How did you guys first meet?
SINS: Three of us met at college and one joined after coincidentally meeting on a football trip in Amsterdam. Before that none of us had really played properly, maybe the summer before I (Connor, guitar & vocals) had begun to write bits and bobs but nothing much. It was immediately apparent that Aaron (Guitar) and I shared so many of the same musical tastes straight away and we always loved talking about music and what it meant to us. We swapped CD’s, taught each other bits of guitar and just organically started creating things. When Jack (Drums) and Sam (Bass) joined something just seemed to click. It became an instinctual need to create something and comment on our lives, and each one of us complimented each other easily to make the songs the best they could be.
Q: What are some challenges you’ve faced doing music?
SINS: Definitely the pandemic has been the biggest challenge a group of musicians could ever face. Not playing live for so long when it felt like we were breaking new ground was really tough to take, and trying to adapt to the situation was pretty tough. Nonetheless, we all made it through (we hope).
Q: Any fun gigs you’ve played so far?
SINS: Fun, mental and awful luck sums up our gigs. Every single time we head out on the road there’s something. Stuart Pearce being at one of our gigs and him pulling the most disinterested and disgusted face as we took a selfie with him, Connor taking down Jack in a club ultimately glassing his hand the night before a show, meaning Jack had to hit soft rimshots on the snare for half an hour, and using our mates bright yellow minivan to take some people up to a London gig – literally a bigger version of The Inbetweeners car. But, the one that definitely stands out is a gig we done in Gosport last year. As we approached the solo and the final crescendo of our opening track of the set in front of a packed pub, Jack’s stick somehow miraculously flew from his hand and zipped some 10 yards directly onto the switch of the extension lead, turning off two amps and leaving a one-stick drummer and singer to carry on helplessly. The odds of that happening on any given gig must be in the miracle territory – in which case if there somehow is a God he must despise Sins.
Q: What’s the next exciting thing for us to look forward to?
SINS: I think the main aim at the moment is Staircase. We have a really cool video coming and a hell of a lot of songs in the pipeline, as well as a lot of tour dates! So keep your ears and eyes open!
Interviewed by Katrina Yang
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