Where did you guys first meet? All of us went to the same school, although attending in in different years, me and Conor soon organized a jam between ourselves as we both shared similar taste in electronic music believe it or not. Me and Ben have been playing together since the age of 11 so there was no trouble finding a drummer when we needed one. When was your first gig and what was it like? Our first gig was at the Farmhouse in Canterbury supporting Casio Kids, we’d been offered the gig about 2 weeks before the date and it happened to be before our planned ‘first gig’. It was a pretty big deal to us as you can imagine, not having gigged before as Trophys. We were all bricking it but we managed to hold it together on stage and I think we pulled it off okay for a first go. The place was pretty busy, The Farmhouse was always busy. There was one guy right in front of us dancing like it was his last chance. Despite him being completely off his tits for the support act, I think he enjoyed his night, which in return put a smile on our faces, we will never forget him. What bands have influenced you? As a trio, we have a pretty varied set of influences, we all bring our own sound to the band which I hope helps make us sound interesting. We all have a love for electronic music, hence the synths and such, but that was more with Trophys when we hadn’t matured as much. We’re all heavily into shoegaze and psychadelia so the obvious influences lie within My Bloody Valentine, The Horrors, Toy, Tame Impala and The Sound. We all have a soft spot for some stuff going on right now like Peace, we’ve all been monitoring them since Conor saw them supporting The Mystery Jets at TW Forum. It’s good to hear a young band writing some interesting music that isn’t easy to place within a genre. They’re going to do well for themselves over the next year. Do you have any pre-gig rituals? We don’t have any specific rituals as such, like harmonies and singing along to your favourite karaoke track, but we enjoy sitting down and having a drink; sometimes a few too many. Running through the set together and discussing any changes always keeps everything cool. Maybe when we have our own backstage room we will make up some kind of dance that only we know, could be fun.
Has your sound changed much since evolving together as a band? Our sound is probably what has changed the most, hence the name change to give us a fresh image and start. Trophys was getting a little old and we felt it didn’t suit the sound anymore, which is vital when you’re promoting yourselves. Youthblood was just something we all agreed on and thought wasn’t too unsuitable to tell your grandma next time she asks. We’ve grown from an electronic band into something a little grungier and shoegazy. Our music is getting noticeably heavier which we all like, we’ve had no negative feedback about our new music, just positive from our shows. We’re pretty excited to record all our new tracks so we can show everybody. Mitch uses way more effects pedals on his guitar than before, he’s getting way more experimental with his sounds which is cool. Conor has bass pedals too which are always making things more interesting. We’re slowly moving away from the concept of using a laptop on stage because it can do nothing but go wrong for us, we’ve got a sample pad now which we’re slowly moving onto. The synth is staying, but less of the cheesy 80’s sounds. What’s next for you guys? Well we’re recording soon, hopefully we will get as many tracks down as possible so we have all our material ready. Really want to record onto analogue tape or something because we struggle to get a raw sound in the studio, it’s time for a change for us and we think that’s a good idea. Some raw sounding tracks would help us get our new sound and name out to the right ears. We’re also really looking forward to gigging over the summer and next few months of course. We want to play as many festivals/gigs as possible, we just want to branch out and enjoy ourselves. I think recording is the most important though, as without some new music people just won’t pay attention to us. ‘Wave Machine’ and ‘Funeral’ have gotten a little old now, for everybody but especially for us. We continue to play them live though, due to public demand. By Jack Claramunt