MB: How would you say the Scottish music scene has changed over the last few years?
JH: There are a lot more bands actually singing in Scottish accents now, bands like Arab Strap and Mogwai were kind of at the forefront of that, that sort of spurned me on and made me think about singing with a Scottish accent as well. To be fair we’ve not spent a lot of time in the ‘scene’ in fact we spend most of our time trying to stay out of it and since we’re on the road most of the year we manage to get away from it pretty easily.
MB: Have you been into any bands from back home recently?
JH: Yeah there are some great bands coming up at the moment, Errors, Remember Remember, oh and The Phantom Band who I keep meaning to see live, trouble is every time I’m back home they’re somewhere else. Also My Latest Novel. There are a lot of shite bands though. A ‘lot’ of shite bands, it seems there’s this formula like if you’re going to be really successful you have to be pretty shite, if you want to play decent music you don’t tend to be too successful.
MB:Do you feel you were influenced by a lot of local bands growing up?
JH: there were a lot of bands that I listened to and still do that had a big influence on the way I sing and our music, certainly Arab Strap and Mogwai were two of the big ones, it’s been great now because we’ve toured with Mogwai which was absolutely fantastic and I’ve got to meet Aidann Moffatt from Arab Strap, in fact my Girlfriend knows him pretty well, which is awesome.
MB: Has your music got any direct links to the area you grew up in?
JH: Definitely, most of our music relates to where we grew up and the experiences we have had whilst growing up there, most of us grew up in small town and villages just outside of Glasgow so we were a little cut off from what was going on in town but certainly where we grew up there really wasn’t a lot going on and that was a big inspiration for us.
MB: Do you think it’s harder for bands in Scotland to get noticed? Or is that not a problem now with the internet and such?
JH: I think for a lot of bands it could be pretty hard up here as labels are few and far between, obviously there are some great labels, Rock Action and Chemikal underground, who both put out some amazing music but we kind of lucked out as we sent our demo to Fatcat and they really liked it, they called us up and said we’ll come to your next show, which was great but at the time we had only played about two gigs as a band and hadn’t booked anymore shows, so we sorted one out quickly and they turned up with a contract. A month or so later we were playing gigs over in America. It was pretty crazy really.
MB: Do you feel there is a decent arts and music scene in Scotland? Something that could evoke inspiration?
JH: I wouldn’t really know, We generally do what we can to get away from Scotland and any scenes, plus we are away so much what with touring and such, we don’t really get a lot of time back home.
How has everything gone with the new album (Forget the Night Ahead out on the 4th of October)
JH: Yeah it was really fun recording this one and the response so far has been great so we’ll wait and see. You know we like it so people so far seem to. We’ve had some strange reviews in the past where people have called us things like Scottish ‘Emo’ which is crazy because we’re really not, I do find some of these articles pretty funny.
MB:Finally, what’s up next for Twilight Sad?
JH: We’re off touring America with Frightened Rabbit and We Were Promised Jetpacks which should be great because America is where we first cut our teeth so it’s always good to go back there and then back here where we shall be playing bigger venues such as the Scala in London next week, which is good I think... Is that a good venue?
photo by Jack Waddington
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