The Clause sit down with Gigslutz to discuss their debut album, ‘Victim of a Casual Thing’  as well as their upcoming tour

Gigslutz: How’s the Preproduction coming along for the tour?

Pearce: Yeah, it’s all finished now. So we had to do it a bit  earlier with the album next week and the in-store stuff. So from now to the end of the year it’s kind of backs to the wall, but that’s what we need, that’s why we’re here.

GS: And touching on the album coming out next week, does that feel like a milestone for you guys?

P: Yeah, it’s been a long time coming. It’s been a collective dream of ours since we were about ‘this’ big.We’ve been playing music since we were 12 years old and at school. And Liam joined us when we left school. 

We were just messing about, playing a few covers and that and one day we all thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be mental if one day we got to the stage where we could release an album’…and now we’re here! So it’s a bit surreal.

GS: What was the experience recording the album like? Was it like you imagined?

P: Definitely a lot of surprises!! It was kind of as I imagined. We did it in a great studio not far from us but it’s never easy writing an album. 

But the whole recording process from where we started to where we ended up we couldn’t be happier with the whole thing. We feel everything’s gelled together at just the right time. 

As you said, there’s always surprises. You hit blocks and you just have to push through them. It’s been a long time writing this album. We’re mega happy with it.

GS: Have many of the songs on the album followed you from the beginning of the band?

P: I think probably the earliest one on there is, ‘In My Element’. That was kind of the song that launched us back in 2019. At that point we weren’t even being serious about this, it was more to get a song out to do a gig in some cellar of a pub in Birmingham. But that song caught fire a bit, so for us as it’s been a big part of us and our journey we wanted it to be on the album

When we wrote that song we were 18, could’ve been 17, and I remember writing the lyrics to that in a supervised study in sixth form! But we’ve had to re-record it for the album because we lost that song to Universal during COVID when we lost a deal we had with them, we had to kind of Taylor Swift it to get the version back for ourselves!

GS: And you touched on it previously, but kicking the tour off with the in-store shows do you enjoy the intimacy of them?

P: It’s our bread and butter really. From where we started we didn’t have an illustrious beginning to the band, it’s as grassroots as it comes and as independent as it comes. Our first gig we put on ourselves, our first ever UK tour we put on ourselves. So we started from the most humble beginnings, and it’s come round full circle to this. So it’s come a long way.

GS: I bet it feels good to be at a place where these shows are that special

P: The in-store stuff is special to us, we like those intimate atmospheres. Now we’re lucky enough to play in bigger venues.

Some venues we’d never dreamed we’d be able to get to as a band, and now we’re here it’s nice to go back and do the instores and strip things back, playing to a small room of people, with your nearest and dearest fans.

We like that kind of gig because our normal gigs are so riotous and crazy that sometimes you’d don’t actually get to hear what the songs are about, so being able to sit with an acoustic guitar and sing the words you wrote, to give people an insight into the soul of each song is good.

We’re flattered that so many tickets have gone out for it.

GS: And touching on the tour, are there any particular dates or venues coming up that are a bucket list to tick off

P: Doing academy 2 in Manchester and the Foundry in Sheffield, selling out a thousand tickets in cities away from our home two months before the tour started is a bit of a weird one aha. 

Not weird because we believe that’s where we need to be, but the first gig we had back (from COVID) was to 30 people and we were gutted, thinking it wasn’t there for us anymore. So then a couple of years later, there’s going to be a thousand people in the room celebrating our debut album, so putting it in that perspective. But we always stuck with it and believed and now we’re here. 

The biggest gig on the tour, and the biggest gig we’ve ever done, is the academy in Birmingham at the end of the year.

It’s funny, we played in this showcase thing for a local music service and it was held at the Academy every year in May. So there’s a video of us playing there when we’re 14 and covering, ‘I Bet That You Look Good on the Dancefloor’ and if you fast forward to now, over a decade later, we’re going to be headlining it ourselves. It will be a bit of a moment for us, it’s always been a dream of ours to headline this venue and have a big homecoming party. And it’s happening at the perfect time as well.

‘Victim of a Casual Thing’ releases October 24th. Tickets for the headline tour are available here.