Backstage with Cloth
Our SCOTLAND TRENDING interviewer Craig Baird caught up with Cloth about their upcoming Perth Festival gig. Read on for Cloth's latest gig news, lockdown projects and new material.
After such a long Covid year how excited are you to get back to performing?
We really can’t wait to get back to performing! When there are no gigs in the calendar it does give you time to work on other things but there does come a point where you’re just so ready to get back out there and play live. There’s not really a buzz that can compare to playing a good show.
How are you feeling about performing in the brand new Scotland Trending series at Perth Festival?
It’s an honour to have been asked to be part of the first Scotland Trending series at Perth Festival. The line-up is incredible and full of amazing, diverse acts (Fergus McCreadie and Fat-Suit are two particular favourites of ours) so it’s very cool to be a part of something like this. We’ve never played in Perth before so it will be a lovely first for us in that regard as well.
And following on from that, I see you are going to be performing your first headline gig in over a year at King Tuts in Glasgow, how does it feel to be playing such a famous venue?
It’s something we’re really excited about. King Tuts is one of those venues you grow up wanting to play, and going to see loads of bands perform in, so to be playing our own headline show there is something that feels quite special.
Over lockdown I see you guys have been keeping busy doing something very exciting by building your own studio, tell us about that?
It’s a project that we’d had in the pipeline for a while but lockdown gave us the opportunity to really get stuck in and finish everything. The whole process took about 4 months and we worked with our Dad throughout it (he is very handy), which was a lovely experience to have and something we’ll always look back on as a positive during a pretty bleak time. We’ve been in and able to record for a few months now and are absolutely loving it. It’s difficult to get over the novelty of having your own space where you can record anytime you want.
I am assuming like almost all bands you have been working on writing new material over this strange Covid year, how have you found the lockdowns in that sense ? Have they helped or hindered your writing process?
The lockdowns have been quite beneficial for us in terms of working on new material. They may have been terrible for our social lives but have been a real asset for productivity! With the lack of distractions it’s just a lot easier to get on with things and you end up getting really immersed in projects which might have taken a bit longer to do if the pubs had been open…
Do you guys have any releases planned for the near future?
We’re working on new material at the moment due for release this year. We can’t reveal anything more than that at the moment but we’re pretty excited with how it’s sounding. Watch this space!
Your first album “Cloth” was very well received, with great numbers on spotify, especially with tracks like “Old Bear” which has around 400 thousand streams, and with many flattering album reviews and a shortlisting for a SAY award. Congratulations on it all! How does it feel for you guys that your first album released enjoyed all this success?
Thank you. It’s been a really rewarding experience seeing how people have embraced the album. When you’re writing and recording it can be quite easy to get lost in that wee bubble, so when things get released and you have people reacting positively to your work it feels great. The album seemed to enjoy quite an organic reception with more and more people taking notice of it, and then the SAY shortlist happened which was a lovely bonus.
And lastly, as a band what makes you all happy? And what do you guys determine as success?
We’re pretty happy when we’re in the studio working on something that we’ll eventually get to play on a stage in front of people. It’s nice to put music out that you’ve worked hard on and then see people connect with it - that makes us happy. Finding a takeaway that’s still open when we get out the studio in the wee, small hours also makes us happy. Success to us is being able to maintain a career in music where you get to spend all your time making music and playing music live. There’s not much that could beat that sort of life in our book. And also the takeaway thing.