Let’s Take Five: An interview with Askies!

I’m not too sure how I’ve been missing out on Leeds based band Askies over the past few years. However, since discovering them a few weeks back, they’re now one of the bands I’m most excited about seeing at Icebreaker Festival, Portsmouth this weekend! I’ve had their back catalogue on repeat whilst finishing this post up and honestly, their sound is huge.

With their Icebreaker Festival performance on the horizon, we decided to have a quick catch up with the band regarding performing live, their latest single ‘Subject To Change’ and the future!

Header photo taken by Glynn Parkinson and you can find more of his work here.

Hi there! Firstly, so that our readers can know a bit more about you, please introduce Askies:

Cheers for having us! We’re a 4 piece alternative rock band from Leeds formed in 2017. The music is somewhere in-between a dusty rock and jangly indie feel. We’ve been gigging all over the country since we formed and this will actually be our first time playing in Portsmouth so we’re buzzing for it! So if anyone that has any good takeaway suggestions, let us know!

This weekend you’re set to play Wedgewood Rooms, Portsmouth as part of Icebreaker Festival 2020. For anyone who hasn’t seen you live before, like ourselves, what can they expect from an Askies gig?

We would say it’s an explosive live show featuring the big choruses and such! To be honest we just try to keep it as exciting as possible really. We have a few of the classic slower numbers to keep our mums happy and let the sweat dry off a bit but other than that, would say it’s an up-tempo show that people can jump around to!

What was the original spark that encouraged you to start creating music as a band?

Two of us actually knew each other from a college back in our hometown and played in a band together there, we then met Nathan and Ben (bass and drums) in the first week of uni (they had met each other at a uni open day on Valentine’s day that same year, so obviously written in the stars). Just for something to do we decided to have a mess around in a practice room and see what happened. Luckily something went right and here we are.

Your latest single ‘Subject To Change’ is a huge track, did anything in particular inspire the track?

Thank you very much, appreciate it! Think that track came from us needing a moment of downtime in the set and wanted to take a step away from the usual sound we go for. That one happened pretty quickly so can’t remember too much about the writing process, but lyrically it’s just about slowly growing apart from someone and having those classic rose tinted glasses on! Think we’re all a bit guilty of that sometimes!

Finally, have you got anything to share regarding upcoming gigs/releases and what have you got planned over the first half of 2020?

Pretty excited about this year as it’s looking pretty busy! But in the next few months we have a couple more singles coming out which we believe are the best yet and encapsulates a new sort of sound we’re going for. In between them we have some more gigs back up in Leeds and got a few London shows in the pipeline too. Also, currently planning a possible tour with some Europe dates thrown in but Northern Trains and Transpennine Express only get you so far and they should really upgrade amp storage facilities.

We’d like to thank Askies very much for their time! You can catch the band at Icebreaker Festival, Portsmouth this weekend on the Wedgewood Rooms stage at 17:15! You can also check out Askies latest single ‘Subject to Change’ below and also keep up with them on social media via the following links:

| Facebook | Instagram | Spotify |