With a slot on the Main Stage at this year’s Barn on the Farm, Scottish trio, Prides are quickly rustling up a hype with their alternative synthpop sound.
We caught up with the guys before their set at the festival.
You guys are set to play the main stage at Barn on the Farm in a bit – are you excited for that?
Stuart: Yeah we’re really looking forward to it. It’s cool, it reminds us of a festival up in Inverness, Brew at the Bog, which is also on a farm. So it’s quite a similar set up, and we played that earlier in the year which was amazing, so yeah, high hopes!
Your music has quite an upbeat vibe to it – that must go down well at festivals for you?
Stuart: Yeah, it tends to. I think everywhere really, where you can just get up and have a bit of fun, there’s a bit more energy involved. Especially when people don’t know who you are. It keeps peoples’ attention a little easier than if you were hitting out a half an hour of ballads!
Your EP – ‘The Seeds You Sow’ – tell us a bit abut the writing process that sort of led to that…
Stuart: It sort of depends, it can start however really. We all write together, or somebody might come up with an idea or we might have a concept in mind, like a beat or whatever. So we just hash out until it’s done really.
Callum: We didn’t sit down to write an EP either, we just wrote ‘Cold Blooded’ ages ago and then we wrote the other two tracks quite close together.
Stuart: Yeah, but when we put to three together we just felt it was a good example of the scope of what we want to achieve and where we’re at, so it worked pretty well. But yeah, it was just one of those things that happened.
Do you have a plan to follow up on that? Any releases coming up?
Callum: Yeah we’re releasing another single soon…
Stuart: Yeah, in the next couple of months. So we were talking about maybe doing that as another EP but I think we’re just gonna do it as a single. We’re sorting out a video at the moment and all that, it’s called ‘I Should Know You Better’.
And you also wrote a song with Lauren Aquilina, which is ace! How did that come about?
Stuart: I’m not really sure, we sort of fell into it a little bit! Like, Lauren is on the same label as us and our managers are friends, and it was just one of those things that seemed to come about.
Callum: Yeah she was in town and just turned up and was like “yeah I’ve got a hotel for the night and I’ll be here tomorrow as well” and we were like “ahhh we’ve got to go play a festival” or something!
Lewis: Yeah, we were like ships in the night, sort of mid-passing we wrote this song together!
Callum: Yeah and as it turned out we just sort of spent one day in the studio and finished the whole track.
Stuart: We love writing and we want to do more writing with other people and all that stuff so it was great to have Lauren in. But we never thought “right, lets write a song for us” or for her or anything. There was no plan, it was just a case of getting in a room together and hanging out and seeing what happened.
Lewis: I think we spent six hours eating cake and talking about chest moustaches and reading buzzfeed!
Stuart: But it was so easy, it just came together so quickly.
Yeah, ’cause when I heard about it, I was a bit unsure because they’re two completely separate genres, but it really worked!
Stuart: Yeah, that’s it! It worked nicely because we were keen to push her that was a bit bigger and louder, but she brought a really nice sentimentality end to it that met in the middle and worked out perfect.
So, apart from Barn on the Farm, what do you guys have planned for the Summer?
Stuart: We’re flying out tomorrow to the west coast of America to do a couple of weeks opening for Magic Man on their tour. So that’s our immediate plans, and then we’ve got a couple of festivals – Wilderness, Y Not and a couple of others. And then more in the pipeline, some bigger things that we can’t really say! But yeah, big things in the pipeline.
Cool, thank you so much for that interview guys, best of luck with the set!
Stuart: No not at all, you’re welcome!
http://www.barnonthefarm.co.uk