What was the beginning pint for your music career? How did it all start?
Made of Eyes first came around when Jason & Me met at college, we were both lead singers/guitarist in separate college bands, but the universe saw it that we would sit next to each other in class. Our personalities just clicked instantly and it wasn’t long before we started making music together and forming the band, we rehearsed with a bunch of different musicians over a period of time to try and find the right mix. Until we came across Liam, he was a bass player in a band that had quite recently broken up so we thought we’d shoot him a message and see if he was up for rehearsing a few tracks with us, then that’s pretty much were it all began.
Was there any bumps on the road? What kind of challenges did you have to deal with?
I know that this is a pretty predictable answer, but I’d say that the pandemic really did set us back, we had so much momentum with releases and stuff, as well as a bunch of shows lined up ready to play. But when the pandemic hit all of that was put on hold, the momentum completely died and all our plans were suspended in time. Since then we’ve kinda had to start again, which can be really mentally challenging for an emerging artist when it feels like you need to gather all that momentum again from scratch. But we’ve not allowed it to knock us back.
What was the most fulfilling and satisfying moment so far?
I mean probably the biggest highlight for us was when we got to play the O2 ABC. It was a 2000 capacity venue in Glasgow, which devastatingly burned down in a really bad fire, back in summer of 2018. We felt humbled to be given the chance to play such an amazing venue before the tragedy, as it was host to some of the best life shows that Glasgow had ever seen. Even though we only played to like 400 people, it was the biggest stage we’d ever played on and it was the most fun we’d ever had playing live. We have some footage of the show on Instagram and TikTok.
How would you describe the music that you typically create?
Well I think at heart all three of us were really inspired by Alternative Rock as teenagers, but as we’ve progressed as musicians we’ve all started to like darker Hip-Hop sounding tracks. I’d say as a band, we sort of create as we consume so these dark/hip-hop influences definitely bled its way into our alternative routes, to make something that’s really hard to pigeonhole. The body of our tracks are based around dark low-end sub, with dreamy sounding guitars/synth, then just a shit load of samples. We are fronted by two male singers with two really contrasting voices, so our music is super harmony rich, we definitely capitalise on this as much as we can, and play to our strengths as a band.
If you could change anything about the industry, what would it be?
I definitely think that things have improved as time has gone on, but there are still far too many gatekeepers in the industry. I love the amount of female fronted artists and bands that are breaking through the industry these days, I feel like artists like ourselves (privileged white males) have always had better opportunities and are presented with more open doors than other groups of people. When in reality, I believe that some of the best artist in the world right now are female, but we have facilitated an industry in which these women would never have been recognised, which is shocking. Thankfully we are progressing and are more educated nowadays, but I think despite these positive steps, there is still desperate need for more diversity and so many ways.
If you were asked to give a piece of advice to upcoming bands, what would that be?
I think it took us a long time to learn this ourselves, but we would definitely say that it feels scary to try and create something truly different, but you should always be fearless. No massive cultural shift ever happened from copying something that has already been done, to truly make an impact you need to present it in a form that hasn’t been seen before. Think of bands like Bring Me the Horizon & Imagine Dragons, or artists like Billie Eilish. These artists came up with something truly beautiful and great, and it is practically impossible to think of another artist that can do what they do. They are some of the biggest artists on the planet, and the thing they have in common is that they were all fearless.
What has been the best performance of your career so far?
Putting our egos aside for a second, even though the ABC was the biggest sure we had ever played, I genuinely believe in our hearts that we performed at our absolute best. I think for the first time since playing live together, we genuinely felt the excitement of playing on a stage that size, it’s almost like playing on that stage unleashed some kind of untapped ability that we never thought we had. Amazing!!!
If you didn’t become a musician, what would you be doing now?
JR – “I’d probably have passed my fucking exams HA!”
What is new with the band at the moment? What are you currently working on and would like to share with the world?
Well we definitely have more cool stuff coming, in the form of releases. Our next single is a track called ‘Ins&Outs’ and it’s dropping on August 25th. It’s probably the scariest release we’ve had to date, we’ve never pushed the boundaries so far outside of your comfort zone than we have with this track, but at setting the tone for what’s to come. A couple more singles this year and a very likely chance of an EP to follow. Our priority as a band as to finally have these tracks see the light of day and get them on a stage, that’s the thing we are most excited for.
