Garage, rock band The Velvet Hands have been on the music scene for a few years now, gaining wide-spread success and last year releasing their debut album, ‘Party’s Over’.

Lead singer Toby spoke to Elly Bailey ahead of their set supporting Liam Gallagher at the Eden Project tomorrow and here’s what he had to say:

How’s it going?

Pretty good, life’s never been better actually; I’m having a great time.

You’ve just moved to London, was this a band decision or your decision?

It’s just Sam and me at the moment and the other boys are coming up in August. We lived up here about a year ago and then we moved back to Cornwall because we ran out of money. So yeah, we went home for a bit but now we’re moving back because Cornwall is probably the most boring place in the world… And everywhere is really far away, London is four hours away, Manchester is six hours away, it makes gigging hard.

How was playing Isle of Wight festival?

It was great, we headlined the This Feeling stage on the Friday. We were a bit worried because we rolled up with high hopes and then realised we were on at the same time as Noel Gallagher so we kind of thought maybe we were just going to play to the soundman… But it packed out and somehow got busier throughout too, so it was great actually, loads of kids going mental. We’re kind of doing okay now but we’ll always have that self-doubt before we go onstage that no one will be there, but yeah it was cool.

You’re playing with Liam Gallagher and Fontaines DC at the Eden Project on Wednesday, (now sold out), how did that come about?

We saw the gig being announced and we thought it’d be a great gig to play. So we contacted the people at Eden and they said they’d have us on but it was up to Liam and his agent, so we contacted Mikey Jons at This Feeling who we know, knows Liam and he sent over some of our new tracks to his management who sent it to him and yeah he loved it apparently and asked us to join the bill.

But yeah, I still won’t quite believe it’s happening until we step foot onto the stage.

You released your debut album last year, are you currently recording the next one?

We just had a new single out, ‘Don’t Be Nice To Me’, which I think is just going to be a stand-alone single. And in Autumn time we’ve got another single out, which will start the album campaign really. And then in February, we have another single due and the album will probably come out alongside it. 

Will you tour with the album release?

Yeah, we will and we’re going to do a mini-tour in November, just a few dates in like Manchester, London, a home town show in Cornwall. We’ve been ignored in Cornwall since we started so it’s nice now that people are taking an interest. I keep seeing friends that I invited to like the page about 4 years ago only just liking it which is kind of funny.

Find The Velvet Hands here: https://www.facebook.com/thevelvethands/