What was the beginning pint for your music career? How did it all start?
For all of us it started with our passion for metal music. Remo (lead guitar) and Marco (drums) know each other from school and had a band together back then as well. So, when Marco joined Project Penny, which is how Ophelia’s Eye was named earlier, he asked Remo to join again as well.
Michel (vocals) joined in the beginning of 2019 and Corinne (rhythm guitar) in August 2019 – both due to an ad that Ophelia’s Eye is looking for new members. And for both it was the perfect fit with Ophelia’s Eye.
At this point we had the feeling that we now have the constellation to start out, recorded demos in our room very quick, built up our social media presence and organized our very first concert in February 2020 just before Corona measures took place.
But due to different goals we split up with our bassist just two weeks before our first concert and played without a bass player until we’ve found Sandro who joined in August 2020 and was really a lucky strike.
Was there any bumps on the road? What kind of challenges did you have to deal with?
After the formation of Project Penny there were many changes of members until we now finally have the lineup, we have now, which just fits perfect – not only musically and goal-wise but also on personality level.
But due to this changes the band couldn’t really solidify until this point. Therefore we only were able to really start out in February 2020, but then Corona came.
The pandemic probably was hard on every industry concerned and for us it was quite a dampener in the beginning since we just got the first taste of playing in front of people and would have been completely ready to start out right before the Corona measures were introduced.
But nevertheless, this time offered great chances and maybe was a bit of fate as well: Corinne got mononucleosis for over half a year and wasn’t able to do anything anyway and after the partial recovery we used the time to go to the studio and record our first EP, which we may have done later, when we would have played more concerts.
Furthermore, we setup 2 live streams during this time: One in a rehearsal room with a great friend of ours who has his bandroom in the same building and one out of a concert location which was quite fun to try as well.
What was the most fulfilling and satisfying moment so far?
Actually, there were many and individual for everyone. But of course, being on stage for the first time was especially fulfilling as well as the release of the very first Single, which was a special moment.
And now there will be another highlight on Saturday September 4th: We will be back on stage after 11 months of break – so we are looking forward to this very much.
How would you describe the music that you typically create?
Honestly we ourselves have some difficulties to put us into any concrete Genre but we would describe us as a band with influences both from the Melodic Death Metal sound of Gothenburg as well as the early metalcore era of 2003.
For everyone of us, the inspiration comes from another band. Michel (vocals) is mostly influenced by old-school hardcore since he grew up with this, Remo (lead guitar) has more melodic influences such as Arch Enemy, Marco (drums) is especially inspired by Eskimo Callboy and Ghostkid, Corinne (rhythm guitar) loves rhythmic bands such as Meshugga or Goijra even if this not exactly influences our songs and Sandro (bass) loves complex and experimental stuff such as Ice Nine Kills.
So there is a lot of different inspiration around in our band and as we develop, probably you will be able to hear a bit more of those different inspirations out of our songs.
What is your creative process like?
We define special rehearsals in which we only jam and focus on writing new songs. When we are jamming we always record ourselves and when something triggeres a feeling in us and makes us say “yes” – we keep this part and start refining it.
Besides that, we of course all jam by ourselves when practicing and when someone has an idea he records it and brings it into our jamming sessions and there we then build up the missing instruments and parts.
And with most songs we refine it over time and in the studio when we have an idea to make it more interesting.
If you could change anything about the industry, what would it be?
We think the most difficult thing nowadays is to really earn some money with music. Streaming platforms of course help building a bigger audience, but it just not really helps the band financial wise, so all the revenue needs to come from live concerts, merch and maybe physical CD’s or Vinyls. And when there is a crisis like the one, we are in right now, this is also a revenue stream that gets lost on the band.
So if we could change anything it would be more opportunities for cultural funding, which unfortunately when it exists, in many cases tends to be in the genres of pop, rock, etc. and also to create an awareness again of what music is actually worth.
But to be honest, with this number of bands it is completely understandable that not every band can get funding and that fans cannot spend too much money on so many bands.
If you were asked to give a piece of advice to upcoming bands, what would that be?
First of all, be honest about what your goal is and define it together. For example, if someone in the band just wants to play together regularly, but doesn’t necessarily want to get ahead, and for another member it’s clear that he wants to get as far as possible in the music business, this doesn’t fit.
If you have defined your goal, draw the consequences if the constellation does not fit and bring the patience to find the right members. Without that, it will come to unsolvable difficulties sooner or later.
Besides the right members and patience, be ready to work hard but also stay optimistic, positive and build up some resilience to deal with draw-backs.
What has been the best performance of your career so far?
Unfortunately we only had three performances so far. The best so far probably was at Rockfact Münchenstein, but we are sure to top this after the Corona break, since recording helped us a lot to play the songs even better and more accurate and also gave us a lot of time to work on our live performance.
If you didn’t become a musician, what would you be doing now?
We unfortunately are not full-time musicians yet, therefore we all have different full-time jobs.
But if we assume that we would make a living with it:
It is difficult to say – we all couldn’t imagine a life without music. Maybe it would have drawn us to another art subject such as painting, making movies or something in this direction. Creativity is important for all of us and we all value all kind of arts not only music.
What is new with the band at the moment? What are you currently working on and would like to share with the world?
Our spirit got even stronger during this crisis, even though it wasn’t always easy to keep the spirit high, as anyone, each one of us was faced with our own difficulties the crisis brought or amplified and some of us had quite a hard time on a psychological level.
But in the end, we just tried to see chances and used them as much as we could and it brought as closer together since we had a lot of deep conversations and bonded like in a family.
Regarding our projects: After releasing our EP we will release another Single combined with a story video on October 8th and finally start playing concerts (the next will be this Saturday, September 4th) again which we really are looking forward to.
Furthermore, we are going back to the studio in the end of October and beginning in November to record our full-length album.
A tour is also in planning, but more to that will be communicated as soon as possible.
