Glasgow’s Home$lice has fast become of the trailblazers of the city’s lo-fi scene, with their shimmery, dreamy sounds that’s capability of hitting explosive post punk or glittering pop, and 2017 seems set to be what sends them further afield.
The year started with their first proper EP, Young Creatives, which demonstrated the band’s knack from a good melody and cemented the foothold that their live show had carved out.
We caught up with them after their EP launch to chat about how the band came about, the EP and the future:
Young Creatives is one of the freshest sounding releases that’s come out of Glasgow recently, tell us how things changes between this and the much rougher sounding Citizen Kane 2?
For a start, we recorded half the number of songs in the same amount of time. Citizen Kane 2 was only supposed to be a mixtape/demo kind of thing. We had only been together six months. We just wanted to get as much stuff out as possible from the get go with that one. With Young Creatives we had more time to record and a longer time to make sure the songs were right. The first release was like we were still getting to know each other. When we recorded Young Creatives it felt like we were tighter as a band and as mates.
You guys formed through some chance meetings at parties and gigs I heard, can you go more in depth about how the band ultimately came together?
Me (Josh) and Scott Reid (bass) played in a band called Jane Bolts. We played a couple of gigs with Deathcats and had gotten to know Scott Whitehill (guitarist). One night I woke up to a party going on in my old flat and when I walked into the living room Scott Whitehill was there. We hadn’t seen each other in a while and got chatting. We spoke about starting up a band. After that I went to Scott and Alex’s (guitar) flat in Battlefield to hear the some of the music they had written. Scott had recently taught Alex to play guitar. I recorded both of them on my phone, went up the road and wrote some lyrics. It seemed to work pretty well. So I asked Scott Reid to join as we needed a bass player and Scott asked Joseph (drums) to join.
I know some of you have backgrounds in other acts in Glasgow, and I’m sure the rest of the band do to, can you detail the band’s background before Home$lice came to be and how that helped form the band as it is today?
As mentioned, myself and Scott Reid played in a band called Jane Bolts, which was a kind of heavy post punk inspired affair. Joseph plays in a few bands like Bellow Below and Adult Fun who can be very heavy and very technical. Scott was/is in Deathcats and is a member of Faiides and as a guitarist draws a lot of inspiration from shoegaze and surf music. I would say that we try and utilise all of these aspects in our music. This is Alex’s first band, but Scott taught her how to play the guitar so there if definitely some of the same inspirations in the sound that she brings to the band.
The EP launch was an energising affair, did the impressive showing from Shredd spur you guys on to put on a real show, as it may have done for them also in their launch the month before?
Definitely. It’s pretty hard to watch Shredd and not get turned. It’s actually really good to go on after they play. I always feel like everyone just pushes it that bit harder. We are good friends with the band so it’s just great to play gigs with them and support each other.
You didn’t go with any label for the release of the EP, it seems that Glasgow has plenty of great small labels that help bands get noticed but Home$lice’s sound doesn’t fit snuggly into any of their niches, was this part of the thinking behind not using a label?
Yes to some extent. We thought it would be good to make our own tapes and distribute them. It’s pretty easy. We came up with the idea for the EP artwork and our mate Steven Pirrie was able to design it. I think perhaps subconsciously that did have some influence on our decision. No one really contacted us or seemed like they would be up for releasing our music. I don’t really know how it works in that sense. I don’t think any of us would have been comfortable with the idea of asking someone to release it and waiting with baited breath til they made their decision. We made it so we released it. Not that we would be averse to a label picking it up but it just felt like the right thing to do this time round.
The year has started pretty strongly for you guys, what’s the plan for the rest of the year?
We have applied for a few festivals so it would be fantastic if we were even to get a couple over the summer. We will hopefully be filming a new video in the coming months and hopefully another EP before the year is out.
Rave Child 