Interview: In Hindsight
Share:
In Hindsight are an upcoming band from Nottingham who concluded their tour across the country, playing at Newcastle’s O2 Academy on December 19th. The four piece band, consisting of Michael, Jacob, Isaac and Dan, have been determined to make themselves heard, performing at schools across the area and pleasing fans.
When they visited Newcastle, which has been their favourite place to perform so far, they spoke to B**P about their hopes and dreams for the future, as well as one members enthusiasm for playing video games on the tour bus. This is certainly not an interview to miss.
How has the tour been going so far?
Michael: It’s been really good. So we’ve played two dates so far – both of them have been great. So it’s been Birmingham and Manchester and they were crazy. It was our first ever headline tour and being able to see loads of fans there just for us was mental in itself, but then the shows have literally been crazy.
Isaac: It’s been really nice to walk out on stage with a room full of people who you don’t know, who know most of your songs.
Dan: It’s so rewarding after working hard over the last few months. It’ll be really nice to see it pay off.
Have you been surprised by the amount of attention you’ve been getting?
Isaac: Yeah, it’s weird to think that two years ago we barely played outside Nottingham, our home town, and that we were playing to small groups of people. Now it’s been a good headline tour, playing to these numbers of people. It’s just incredible, we’re so grateful for all of the support.
Do you think you would ever want to be as famous as bands like One Direction?
Michael: I’d like to think that we’d be able to be as successful as that and we definitely have the determination to go as far as possible. I think, especially in our genre of pop rock, it has the availability for us to go bigger and we’re going to try and do that, we’re going to try and take it as far as we can.
Jacob: I think we’re trying to find our place within that bigger range. I think we’re just trying to write our own music, be original and just go for that mainstream audience with a different take on it, other than just pure boyband, pure pop music – we try and put our own twist on it.
Have you found that any of you have any annoying habits whilst travelling together?
Michael: So Jacob’s obsessed with TV and Xbox. We were in the van today and we’d had a very late night – we had to drive from Manchester to Newcastle last night, so we’d got to work until about 3 o’clock in the morning. The next day we were up at 8 o clock which was really early for us, and we’d barely slept, we were all really grouchy, and Jacob was like “Xbox, on, let’s play” and we were like “Come on man, really?!”
Dan: That’s going to happen today as well.
Michael: I guarantee that, as soon as we finish this gig, we’ll get in the van and he’ll turn it on and start watching Planet Earth or whatever he was watching.
Dan: We’ve been watching Planet Earth, and that’s actually quite entertaining, I’m not going to knock him for that.
Isaac: I’ve been known to talk in my sleep.
Michael: Yeah, that has happened a lot. I apparently sleep rapped in my sleep, so I unleashed my inner gangster.
How did you all become friends before the band?
Michael: Me and Daniel are brothers so we’ve known each other for quite a while, as you can imagine. Me and Isaac actually met next, we became mates and started doing gigs together and that kind of thing.
Isaac: And the really good thing about our band as well is that we came together naturally. A lot of bands nowadays get put together by management or a label or whatever – they just take 4 random guys and put them together.
How did you come up with the name In Hindsight?
Michael: It was actually from an episode of the Inbetweeners where somebody said the words in hindsight and we were throwing around a few names and that’s the one we went with.
How old were each of you when you first realised that you had musical talent?
Michael: I remember when I was in nursery. You know when you’re in nursery and you’re singing and games and stuff like that? We used to have to sing along to these kids’ songs and apparently, according to my parents, I was quite a quiet boy in nursery but I was really loud at singing, and I was the loudest singer out of everybody. So I think from a young age I’ve always loved to sing and I started playing guitar when I was about 7 years old – our dad plays guitar so that’s where I got that from.
Dan: I started having drum lessons when I was 6, but I think the thing that proved that I wanted to do it was that I went through that phase when I would be into football for a while, wanting to be a spy or a firefighter or stuff.
Michael: We’ve all been there; we’ve all wanted to be a secret agent.
Dan: But then drums and music just stayed constant through all those different seasons and it reminded me that ‘oh, maybe I should be doing that, maybe that’s what I should do if it’s stayed through it all’.
Isaac: I come from quite a musical family. My dad is a musician, so I’ve always been surrounded by music and music has always been a big part of my life. I started playing when I was 8 and my dad sort of pressured me into doing it because he obviously wanted me to start early instead of playing on the PlayStation, and I just got into it. I think I was in my first band when I was 11 or something, and I’ve just been doing it ever since.
Jacob: Yeah, similarly to Dan actually. I sort of liked football and things like that, I tried sport – running I used to do, track running when I was younger. I started playing guitar, I had piano lessons when I was about 5. I sort of picked up a guitar, had lessons and I just thought that was the thing for me, and that was when I was about 11.
As you are all quite young, does being in the band interfere with your education?
Michael: That’s a ‘definitely’, to put it bluntly. When we were back at school, a lot of the time the exams, and revision was compromised with practicing and that kind of thing. I mean I managed to get by and I passed all of my exams, but I definitely think that because my heart and passion was in music, I didn’t want to focus on my education so much.
Isaac: I’ve left sixth form now; I’ve done all of my A-levels, but everyone who I went to school with has gone to university and I was one of the only people to stay behind, stay in Nottingham and carry on with the band.
Dan: I’ve had to take time off, but I feel like my attitude to school hasn’t changed. Obviously I’m not passionate about school, but I feel like when I’m in the band and doing music, I put my all into that. If I was at school dreaming about the band it would be a waste of my time and a waste of my focus.
Jacob: I’m in sixth form, or college or whatever, and I do music, music tech and music literature. It’s hard to balance the time out, and get the trust from your teachers. When you say I’m going to do this, and you don’t do it, or you do it – it’s hard.
Dan: I think it’s hard as well, especially if people don’t know who the band is or what they’re doing or how they’re doing. “What uni are you going to?” “Oh, I don’t think I will, I’m in a band.” and they’re kind of like “oh, what’s this about”.
Where has been your favourite place to perform?
Michael: I know that we’re in Newcastle right now so it seems bias, but I genuinely think that Newcastle is one of the best places to play. Everyone’s so friendly.
Dan: Best energy I think
Jacob: Yeah it sounds cliché that we are here, but it’s just that everyone’s so friendly and everyone buys into you even if they’ve never seen you before.
Why did you decide to do a school tour?
Michael: So we got the chance to do a school tour through our manager Andy, and we thought it would be great to go into schools because it’s our target audience of school kids and teenagers, so we thought we could market our music to them and that would be a great way to get us out there. It really did help bring in a lot of ticket sales and a lot of attention online for our tour.
Who are your musical inspirations?
Michael: I’d say we’re inspired by a lot of different stuff at the moment. I like listening to things like Katy Perry and things like that, so a lot of pop stuff is what I listen to. In the band it comes across a bit different, more of a rocky sound – we all have a background listening to rock music and stuff like that.
Dan: I think I can appreciate a lot of music when it’s done well. I’m not too clued up on genre or the era it’s from or anything like that. If it’s done well, it’s done effectively and it sounds good, then there’s not really any right or wrong. It’s how you want to do it, how you want to play it.
Isaac: I’ve got to agree with that. If it’s good, I’ll listen to it.
Jacob: As you grow up, you do have your stages. You listen to certain things, and you do have weird stages. We’re at the point now where we appreciate what we think is genuinely good music.
Where do you see yourselves five years from now?
Michael: I’d probably say we’d like to be headlining the main stage of venues like this. I think we’d like to be signed to a record label, which would be one of our targets. Also release a few albums and stuff like that which is basically just carrying on doing what we’re doing
Isaac: Progress is the main thing.
Do you write all of your own music?
Michael: As a band we don’t have anyone who writes our songs for us. We’ll mainly come up with the idea for a song, jam it together, maybe change things and stuff like that. But we’re quite proud that we play original music.
Which was your favourite song to write?
Michael: I’d say that our new song, ‘Steal The Show’, is a really fun one to play live. I remember writing it and we were all jumping around getting excited about that. I think from the start we knew that song was full of energy.
Are you planning to release another single or album soon?
Dan: It’s top secret at the moment, but we’re working on a few things behind the scenes that we can’t really show anyone.
How often do you rehearse?
Michael: So much time. When we’re not on tour we’re usually preparing for the next tour, so we’ll be rehearsing and practicing as much as possible. Often the change over time between tours is quite short. We only had two weeks to rehearse this time, so every day we could we’ve been there 5 hour straight practicing over and over.
Jacob: It’s our hobby, not just our jobs.
Which of you are single?
Michael: We’re actually all single. I suppose we don’t really have very much spare time outside the band, and we don’t really think it would be fair on people if we got into a relationship and not have the time to spend with them. We have each other; I mean we’re not too lonely!
This story was featured in our first print edition which is available now in schools and by contacting Yasmine@bringingwords.org