We sit down with Glaswegian pop-punk band Lost In Stereo, and talk about what pop punk means to them, their already impressive collaborations and what else we should expect from the young, up-and-coming foursome.
First off, how are you connected, if at any way, with Strathclyde University? (#awks if not.)
Three out of four of us went to Strathy. Andrew finished his Physics degree last year, Jon did an MSc within NAOME this year as well as his undergrad in DMEM, and Ellis is currently in 4th year doing Mechanical Engineering. We’ve attended many Strathy freshers celebrations over the years so we can’t wait to have one last go at it! #webleedmaroon
You’ve been labelled as a pop punk band. What does that term mean to you?
We think it’s awesome! Heaps of our favourite bands fall under the same umbrella so it’s cool with us. We try and write pop-punk and rock songs, but the different influences we all have individually end up shaping the songs into a sound that we think makes us unique. We don’t really worry about the genre of our songs as we’re writing them, as long the finished product sounds good to us.
How did you get to work with Stef from the Midnight Beast? That’s pretty cool, btw.
Sort of a long story but essentially he was a friend of a friend. We started working with someone in the music industry who knew Stef and introduced us to him knowing that he was a great songwriter. We’ve had a few writing sessions and hang out sometimes when we’re in the same cities and he’s definitely become a friend of the band rather than just someone to write with.
How are you feeling about playing Strathy Freshers and playing the same bill as The View?
Buzzing! It’ll be a great night, especially being the final Saturday of Freshers. A few of us know all too well how crazy the last night of Strathy Freshers can be and to have a band like The View, a classic Scottish indie-rock band with a setlist full of sing alongs, playing after us is sure to have everyone excited – including ourselves. We’ve seen them at gigs and festivals before, even bumped into them in our local pub given that they’re only from up the road.
What other Scottish artists do you take inspiration from, if any?
The majority of the inspiration we have in terms of songwriting comes from American pop punk, as that’s just the way this genre has always been. Over the last few years, bands like Neck Deep and As It Is, from Wales and England, have burst onto the scene and are definitely influencing us more and more. We love hearing local Scottish bands too and have absolutely heard ideas we would like to and have maybe tried to recreate for ourselves. Starting out as a Glasgow pop punk band we’ve gotten to know bands like ‘Don’t Look Down’, ‘Northern Nightlights’ and ‘Finding Argyle’ pretty well and that’s just to name a few.
What can we expect from your debut E.P., ‘Famous First Words,’ – released on the 29th of September?
Big riffs and catchy choruses! We like to think that these songs are the best we’ve written so far, and can’t wait for people to hear them. We’ve got four big songs, two of which we wrote with Stef, and an acoustic track, and it’ll be the first acoustic we’ve released. We’re really happy with how they’ve turned out so at this point we’re just buzzing to get them out there.
What have you got planned for the rest of the year and for 2018? What should we expect?
We have some really exciting gigs coming up, including our own headline show for our EP release at Nice n Sleazy on the 27th Sept. We will also be playing our first ever gig outside of Glasgow and then possibly the biggest gig we have ever played all in the next couple months, we can’t wait to play them (but shhhhh we haven’t announced them yet). Stay tuned and we’ll keep you posted!
You can find Lost In Stereo on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Find anything else on their website.
By Alisa Wylie
