Photo: Press
In 2013 a call from Zane Lowe's producer about their emotive indie cut 'Emergency' from their first EP would change the lives of five friends from Southend forever.
Ushered into the consciousness of music fans around the world they penned a deal with RCA and have gone from playing empty venues in London to supporting Muse and touring in the US and making television appearances on Conan and the Late Late show.
It's no accident that they've skyrocketed. Their visceral live shows have earned them a feverish following and their music has translated phenomenally well in sales.
We caught up with the band, who are in Isle Of Wight today playing the mainstage at 5pm, to learn more about the Southend's musical legacy, their reaction to the election, and what their second album out in September has to offer.
Nothing But Thieves are: Conor Mason (singer), Joseph Langridge-Brown (guitar), Dominic Craik (guitar), Philip Blake (bass), James Price (drums).
GW: Hello Nothing But Thieves, you've just announced you're second album, Broken Machine, congratulations. What's been the difference between writing the first and second album for you?
Joe: You have a lot longer to do the first one and six months to writer the second.
Dom: You try not to get caught out on the whole writing thing so we started writing the second album before the first one was even out and we were writing it on the road, in hotel room, on the bus and all that sort of thing.
Joe: We saw a lot of horror stories about bands that stop writing when they're on tour come back and are like, 'shit we've got to write an album now and that just freaked us out a bit.
GW: How do you deal with the work rate it requires to sustain it at the top of the music business?
Joe: I think it's the nature of the business it needs to be at a high standard. We strive for that within ourselves, the industry doesn't change us.
GW: Did you meet in school?
Joe: Me and Conor met in school and were in bands before this one
Conor: Oh, I watched footage of it the other day, it was so embarassing.
GW: You're all from Southend and met there. How's the local scene? The Horrors are famously from there too.
Phil: I remember watching The Horrors first show at a venue called Junk.
Conor: Yeah they were a few years above us. It's funny when I was at school kids would have The Horrors written on their homework diaries and now kids have us on there, which is crazy.
GW: Do they have a placard of you on the wall?
Conor: No Joe and I are in The Old West Cliffians society for people who have done...
Joe: It's like dodgy MP's and us.
GW: What else is there in Southend?
Dom: We've got the longest pleasure pier. I don't know what makes it pleasurable, there's nothing pleasurable about it.
GW: Eventually you must have broken out of Southend and made it to London?
Dom: Yeah the London gigs were big things for us but we were sort of becoming the band like most bands do playing to nobody, you go to London and play to people that don't really care. You get some cowboy promoters, too. There was one particuarly bad place in Mayfair, he'd turn up with the PA on his back and we'd have to play where it cost 14 quid for a drink and mixer. But things got better, when we started actually touring, we went to the wonders of the world, like Hull.
GW: The new single, 'Amsterdam', it's got a huge sound.
Conor: It stems from out love of a strong gutteral chorus. In terms of the tones there's kind of a Foos, Queens Of The Stone Age vibe.
Joe: Mike Crossey our producer helped that but getting our guitars as least distorted as possible whilst still maintaining what distortion is - if you go too distorted everything gets lost.
GW: Going back to the album, can you describe anything written on Broken Machine that stems from introspective thoughts?
Joe: There was. There were times on tour where we weren't sure if we were going to tour again because we overdid it. We went on tour for too long; we didn't have a break at all. We got these Muse dates at one point and were juggling them with headline shows and didn't take a break then went straight out to the US for 7 weeks.
GW: What was it exactly that cause you to 'overdo it'? Was it dealing with fame?
Conor: No that was fine because our rise has been quite a gradual, we've been a band for about six years. The wobble is going from working in a bar to touring the world for 9 months of the year, you're rewiring your brain for that lifestyle, that was definitely a challenge.
Dom: I think we thought we were invincible. You quickly learn that it's healthy to take a break.
Conor: I'd like to say, though, the album isn't all about us, it's our thoughts on the world, too.
Joe: The idea of Broken Machine was to talk about mental health - it's a big topic throughout the album. But then it's also about religion, political systems and other things.
GW: I saw from Twitter you voted Labour. Do you consider the election a good result? Joe: it's the best result we could have hoped for
Dom: I think the main encouragement for us was the amount of young voters that turned up. 72 percent of 18 to 25's, which is unheard of. We were endorsing voting and a lot of other artists were doing that, it is truly refreshing to see people get back into politics
Conor: I feel people have woken up after Brexit.
Joe: Regardless of who you vote for that doesn't matter, the fact people are getting involved is a positive thing.
Dom: We weren't telling people to vote which was we were just saying get your voice out there - and it's happened.
Nothing But Thieves have taken over the Isle Of Wight app from 4pm, download it now to see what they're up to behind the scenes and on stage.
Download the Isle Of Wight app developed by Second Screen
