Sit back and relax to yet another great Indie band hailing from Leicester, expect big things from this good vibe/chilled out rock band.
“We have had various influences from across the music world, older acts such as The Smiths
really inspired our guitar playing. Then obviously there’s all your current acts such as Peace,
King Krule, Temples.”
Hey, would just like to thank you for taking part in this, how are you?
Yeah, we’re all fine thank you. Thank you for having us.
So how did you all get together and start SURF?
The band was originally put together in October 2012 by Hayden and Olly in a previous band called Hallowed People. We tried several bass players until we found Lewis and he became part of the band. About a year later our guitarist decided to leave the band, it sort of spurred us on to make the decision to start again. In January 2014 Lew moved to guitar (his preferred instrument) and we started SURF. Again the search for a bassist was proving difficult, but we found Dale who fit perfectly.
What influence did you guys take when starting SURF?
We have had various influences from across the music world, older acts such as The Smiths really inspired our guitar playing. Then obviously there’s all your current acts such as Peace, King Krule, Temples.
How did you get the band name? Does it have a specific meaning?
No the name doesn’t really have a specific meaning, it just sort of felt right. We pondered over so many names and this one just stood out.
Do any of you have any pre-recording or pre-gig rituals?
Erm, we don’t really have any rituals as such. I think Lewis probably gets the most nervous before gigs and will tune all the guitars literally a thousand times just to ease his nerves. We may sometimes have a hug together or little group talk but nothing that seems to stick as a routine.
What is the weirdest thing to have happened to you?
Not many ‘weird’ things have really happened to us yet. Probably the most surreal thing was gigging to a crowd of roughly a thousand in the main room at the O2 in Leicester, supporting probably our biggest local band, By the Rivers. At such an early stage in the band, playing to a crowd of that size really was amazing for us. I suppose a weird-ish thing that has happened was when we recorded an acoustic track in the back of a transit van at Strawberry Fields Festival, yeah, that was pretty weird.
What music are you guys listening to at the moment?
We listen to a a lot of our current influences; Peace, Swim Deep etc. But Hayden is also a fan of Ben Howard and Ed Sheeran which may not initially spring to mind when you think of bands. We also really support a lot of the b-town bands such as JAWS, Troumaca, Laced and Babypink.
How do you feel about the increase of vinyl sales? Can we expect some wax from SURF?
Yeah we think it’s great. It’s wonderful to see physical records being bought again and it’s been really beneficial for the locally-run record stores and we hope that this trend continues for further years. We are off to record towards the end of February, so keep an eye out for new tracks heading this way in March.
This year had the lowest album sales ever recorded, how do you feel this reflects the music industry of today?
Hopefully that won’t become the norm. I think a lot of it is down to streaming services such as Spotify and Youtube, once people have access to free music there’s no going back for them really, is there. It’s sad for artists and record labels to have witness this but with the ever growing world of online streaming it’s quite possible that album sales will continue to plummet. I don’t think it can be said that it reflects the music industry as a whole, but if there is some way of stopping the sales from decreasing then why isn’t anyone doing it. We prefer not to have such a political view on music, if that’s how the public want to listen to their music then by all means, go ahead, it shouldn’t stop any artist from making their own music, and for us, as long as our music is getting listened to and being enjoyed, that’s all we can ask for.
What is in the pipeline for SURF?
Well, the most exciting news is that we are going up to Liverpool to record our first single, with the same guy that helped produce The Maccabees album, Wall Of Arms. We really can’t wait to see how that turns out. We are also off on a small tour, gigging at various places around the country from January up until April, places such as The Actress and Bishop in Birmingham, and The Junction in Cambridge.