Every Monday we will be bringing you interviews with unsigned UK or Ireland artists for Independent Music Monday. Recently we caught up with unsigned London band Opal Skies to find out more…
Who is in the band, how did you meet, where are you from and how did you come up with the name?
The band consists of Will (lead singer), Tom (guitarist), Sam (guitarist), Ollie (keys/guitar), and Piers the drummer. We first met at university in West London, we all liked the same type of music and Tom was starting up the band with initially other people but over the course of about 2 months things changed and we all joined one by one! The band name was made purely from luck, we wanted a cool sounding name, we always talked about having a colour in our band name and it kinda just came out, and we chose that to be the name really!
Who were your musical influences when you were growing up and who are your influences now?
We all had various different influences, Tom had a rock, electronic and classical background, Will had a rock, indie and folk background, Ollie was primarily hip-hop but also rock too, Sam is the prog rock fan of the band and Piers loves his 70’s rock and also punk. As a band we tried to combine little elements into most of our songs to pay tribute to our influences and where we grew up and what music we grew up with. We love Royal Blood, Nothing but Thieves and Liily at the moment.
How would you describe your sound?
We’d say, if you were being super vanilla, alternative rock, but we have so many different sounds influencing it. There’s like art rock in there too, and also tiny bits of heavy rock stuff.
What is your latest release called and what was the influence behind it?
Our latest release is Look Back, and we wanted to create a heavy song when making this. Lyrics wise, Will and Tom lived together when writing this, and Tom was in a bit of mental situation at the time, so it’s actually written about seeing what Tom was going through at that time in his life, we’ll let you decide what it’s actually about!
What’s your local music scene like?
London is great for music, obviously lockdown has brought it to the edge of the cliff, and now it’s slowly crawling back away, but we have no trouble getting gigs, we just want to tour!!
What do you have planned for the next 12 months?
We have a few more tunes in the making, and we are planning for a couple of gigs, we’ve got one confirmed for the 2nd of October at The Water Rats, please come along to support us, we will be eternally grateful!!!
Is there anyone you’d love to collaborate with?
We would love to collaborate with some crazy cool heavy rock producers, would be really cool to see what our producer now plus them could create with us.
Any funny stories surrounding your live performances?
Best one yet was Sam’s guitar breaking halfway through a song, having to then get a guitar before his solo, and he pulls out a pink squire strat, he wasn’t happy at first but actually got on with it in the end!
What is the one thing that you want readers to know about you?
We all are vegetarian or vegan, and we would promote that to anyone! Oh, also we love you all, please go stream our new tune, it won’t be a chore I promise!
You can find out more about Opal Skies via Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, Twitter or YouTube.
Merryn 