A year after releasing their debut EP This Won’t Ever Last, Cardiff emo trio Sleep Outside’s tastes might have changed – but, as frontman Adam Holborn tells Emma Way, they’re hoping to give their songs the long-awaited baptism they deserve at their Fuel Rock Club headline show.
So on Thurs 13 Oct, you’re playing an anniversary show for your EP This Won’t Ever Last.
Adam Holborn, Sleep Outside singer/guitarist: When we released the EP we never really got a chance to play in Cardiff and celebrate the EP. We did our first tour two weeks before the EP came out, and played Tiny Rebel, but never in full at a headline show. We had a show booked in December for that purpose last year – we all got COVID on the day, so had to cancel. Now’s the time where we get to finally celebrate it and play it in front of all our friends!
It’s very unlucky that you all got COVID the same day…
It was. We actually originally had a show in Clwb Ifor Bach supporting Junior, and had a band practice two days before. The next day, we found out that Junior had COVID so they cancelled the show. I spent like 12 hours that day rebooking us a replacement show, and then the next morning – the day of the show – I woke up and tested positive, and then the rest of the band did too. So it was a pretty terrible week to be honest.
Do you normally book your own shows?
We’ve actually just got on board with Avocado Booking – they’re our booking agent now. Matthew Evans, formerly of Funeral For A Friend actually, handles our bookings. But yeah, most of the bookings come through me or the rest of the guys. I’ve been putting on gigs in Cardiff since I was 14 – it’s something I’ve always done, whether it be for my own bands or friends’ bands or whatnot. We try to handle as much stuff as we can. We’re an independent band. Besides Matthew, there’s no one else on board – it’s just the three of us. We all kind of chip in and do what we can.
How does your debut EP sit with you now a year on?
That’s a good question – it’s kind of mixed emotions. It was very much a time and place thing. I started my own project before Sleep Outside, so a lot of the songs are old songs that I brought to the rest of the guys and we worked on them together. It was still very much a collaborative effort, but I guess a lot of emotions and situations have changed. There are one or two songs in there that we hate! Our Cardiff headline show is going to be cool because it’s our last chance to play those songs as they were intended to be heard.
Have you always been drawn to the style of math-rock? Do you remember the first time you heard a math song and thought oh, this is really cool?
Yeah – I mean, I personally have. I don’t know about the rest of the guys. Fall Out Boy was my favourite band growing up – I loved the vocals and the production of the earlier stuff, the super pop-punky raw stuff. Then I found out that they were all into hardcore and metalcore bands when they were younger, so I got into that and went super heavy down the metal route for a really long time.
Then it’s kind of a combination of things really. I was talking to a friend about this the other day – I had a skateboarding game on my laptop when I was 14, and I heard the band Into It. Over It. for the first time. That just blew my mind because it was what I was used to hearing – that kind of emo, pop-punk thing – but there was something different going on, a lot of different time signatures, and it was more appealing to me at the time. A friend showed me the British band Colour and that changed everything for me, and got me into bands like American Football. It all started from there, really.
Do you find that writing in open tunings allows you to work independently, even when you’re in a band, because you can do so much more?
Yeah, I think that’s how I started. All the bands I love and listen to these days through that kind of emo/math-rock sort of thing – they all play in open tunings. It was my way of learning the songs to begin with. You can just get away with a lot more really – it’s like cheating at guitar! It means I can have a little bit more fun with it.
The project I did before Sleep Outside, Solstice, was just me on acoustic guitar. That allowed me to use fun chords and make things a little bit more interesting, as opposed to the classic singer-songwriter ‘guy with a guitar’ thing. I feel like that’s been done, and a lot better than I was doing.
Why was it important for you to start this band?
It was super important to me. Me and the other guys have been friends since high school – we all grew up in Cardiff – Matt [Williams, drums] and Olly [Taki, bass/vocals] played together in bands for years, but they never let me join! Me and Olly played in a band called Defeatist from Cardiff – they’re still going – but it wasn’t what we were listening to at the time, so we both decided to leave and try and start something up. Matt came back to Cardiff for a bit, Olly bumped into him by pure chance and they went for a drink and then we all decided to start this band. If it wasn’t for playing in this band I don’t know what I’d be doing.
When can we hear new music from you?
That’s something we can’t figure out at the moment. There is another single recorded, which we’re hoping to release before the end of the year – we’re trying to finalise some stuff. We did a really cool cover as well – can’t give much away, but it’s one I don’t think people would expect from us!
We’ve got a demo folder of 30-plus songs that are halfway-written riffs and vocal lines. We’re just in the stage where we’re figuring out what to do with them; hopefully, there’ll be a longer release sometime next year, maybe March/April.
Sleep Outside, Fuel Rock Club, Cardiff, Thurs 13 Oct (Tickets: £5. Info: here); The Moon, Cardiff, Fri 25 Nov (free entry. Info: here).
words EMMA WAY
