12 Questions with Waiting Till Marriage

Interview by Ella Holden & Sophie Turkman

S&E: First of all, we’ve got to ask about the name- when we first heard it, we were expecting your music to be something of Christian rock realm. How did you come up with it and are its religious subtexts important to you or is it ironic?

Brandon: Well it’s definitely 100% ironic, we came up with the name during a games night on Halloween 2020 and it just stuck, that was it. 

S&E: We love the haunting tones of ‘Strawberry Girl‘ what was the inspiration behind the name and is it purposely juxtapositional against the tone/lyrics of the song? 

Adam: The name ‘Strawberry Girl’ came from a girl I dated that always wore strawberry lip balm. Originally, it was based on a Jamie T tune called ‘They Told Me It Rained’ as I just loved this sort of hopelessness in his music and wanted to recreate something similar. I took the song to Liam and, he was actually going through something similar so he really got on board with the whole idea. 

S&E: We can’t help but sense inspiration from The Drums (the nature of the lyrics and melodies) – would you agree? 

Ieuan: None of us had ever heard of The Drums before we got this interview, but we appreciate it, we’ve listened to them now and they’re very good!

Liam: They’re a really good band and we can see why you think that but our influences started with more with the likes of Peace, The Vaccines, and has now evolved into more wider listening.

S&E: How and when did you guys get together?

Ieuan: Well me and Adam met in school four or five years ago, and we started playing together, but we needed a bassist because we sounded terrible. So I roped in Liam who I’d played in a few groups with and the three of us played for a few years together in other groups but we realised we still sounded terrible so we got Brandon in late 2020 and he makes us sound great because he’s got loads of talent.

S&E: How have you found your emergence into the post-covid music era?

Liam: Well we started gigging in July 2021 so two weeks or something after all restrictions were lifted but we had been practicing since summer 2020 and our original plan was to do our first show sort of January time but restrictions kept holding us back.

Adam: I think, like everyone else at the time, we had to learn to be fast on our feet and be open to change otherwise we’d get nothing done.

Liam: It was scary. We would go to practice one week and not know if we would be going next week. We were booking gigs in advance fully knowing they probably weren’t going to happen and I think the hardest thing was to convince people to come out again after restrictions were gone. We wanted people to be safe but we also wanted to get back to playing so it was a difficult one.

S&E: Despite the atrocities of the pandemic, do you think that lockdown was a blessing in disguise for the band to find your sound and come up with music material?

Brandon: Absolutely.

Ieuan: Yeah.

Liam: I’d say it was, it gave us time to sit back and take our time together and a lot of time to practice on our own too.

Adam: I think because the practice rooms were still open for the majority of the lockdown, we had a lot of time with no pressure’s from recording or performing and we just met up and said “let’s play some songs”

Brandon: I think it was good for me, joining late, it let me hear your sound and add something to it. 

S&E: Adam, you’ve recently said that your latest single, ‘Three Times‘, “is a response to those telling me to sort my life out and get a real job”. Did the whole band have to deal with doubts about your musical career that were aided by comments like the above?

Adam: Well, I think it’s kind of part of the job, I think at the level we’re at nothing’s ever certain and it takes an awful lot of work to create a career in music.

Ieuan: And luck.

Adam: And I think there will always be pressure and doubts from ourselves and from others to succeed no matter what.

WTM_Credit: Ethan O’Dowd

S&E: Well done on signing with Jacaranda Records! How have you found the help of a record label as opposed to being entirely independent?

Brandon: I think the label adds a little more structure and an extra push towards the band that we weren’t getting before. 

Liam: I think what’s followed from the label signing as well is opportunities that haven’t been coming in before as now we’re backed by someone serious which shows we’re serious too.

S&E: What does your band add to the indie-rock genre that sets you apart from the rest?

Brandon: I think each one of us has a vastly different influence and I think that adds four different outlooks on everything.

S&E: As a relatively new band, have you found live performances to be a daunting experience at all?

Ieuan: No.

Liam: Not in the slightest.

Adam: The performances are the best part.

S&E: Was there a specific moment or song that you have written that made you really notice that you’d found your sound?

Liam: Probably our most recent single ‘Three Times’. It was when we got sent back the first mix and I sat down to listen to it and I got a bit emotional. 

Ieaun: I totally agree.

Brandon: I love that song man it’s still on my playlist.

Adam: Yeah, I remember when I got it back and there was a time I was scared and wanted to send it back because it wasn’t like anything I’d heard before.

WTM_Credit: Lucy McLachlan

S&E: We recently did an interview with another Liverpool based band, San Pedros Vision, and asked them a question that we’d love to get more answers to: Do you believe, as consumers of contemporary culture, we have become complacent with modern forms of music distribution? (Spotify, youtube, etc)-has this been debased by these mediums? 

Brandon: I think it depends due to the fact that every genre is different. Recently ‘new wave’ has been coming back into the industry and more people are seeing this as ‘popular music’ although it was created 40 years ago. But going back I think if someone whose creating music now is not satisfied or is not getting the best outcome, it might simply be because the genre is not as popular or thriving within music today. And I’m terms of platforms such as Spotify when you see the amount of streams your getting, weather it being low or high, it can either make you want to progress and do more and more or make you want to completely stop and the best thing to do is keep pushing forward.

Ieaun: It’s now easier than ever to release your music but that makes it harder than ever to get listened to.

S&E: What are your plans for the near future as far as gigging and album releases…?

Adam: We have plans to record new music in June with the label and have that out before the end of the year with a few cheeky surprises linked to it. We also have a good amount of shows and festivals lined up for the summer which we’re proper excited about. We have a few very exciting shows happening near the end of the year which we can’t talk about just yet but we will be announcing them very soon!

Thanks!

Follow the band on the links below

Instagram/Facebook/Tik Tok/Twitter/Spotify