Music > Interviews

Nothing But Thieves

22/03/16

Outline last interviewed Nothing But Thieves last year, with a group of young volunteers at BBC Radio 1’s Academy at Open, ahead of the Big Weekend. Since then they’ve been busy boys, travelling to the States and Japan, and supporting Muse on some massive dates. They visit the LCR this month as headliners, and I spoke to guitarist Dom about the best bar in Tokyo and how to deal with a 360° stage.

When you first started Nothing But Thieves did you expect to be doing so well by this point?

No, we never thought into the future that much. We live very much in the moment – when you’re writing music you’re trying to better the music, when you’re touring you’re trying to better your live show. It’s nice to have realistic goals but it all happens so quickly you don’t really have that perception of the future. Obviously as a 15 year old kid you dream of playing in a stadium one day, or you write a song at that age and expect it to go Top 10 one day, you don’t think like that. It’s healthy, because there are no expectations and so every good thing that happens for the band you take in your stride and aren’t ever disappointed.

You have already got a stadium filling sound, but what was your very first gig like?

Oh my god, it’s so dire! It makes us sound like a pathetic bunch of morons. We used to play empty bars and pub back rooms. There’d be an iPod dock and you’d plug into it, no one would be in there except for your parents who would’ve driven you down. I remember playing The Underbelly in Camden and no-one came except for my mum and she was only there because we had to be driven there. A week later the venue’s ceiling fell down and they had to close it! That kind of epitomises where we were as a band at the time, but the ceilings in the arenas we’ve been playing with Muse recently are well constructed so they haven’t collapsed!

Yeah you’ve played some huge nights supporting Muse recently haven’t you? Have they been your biggest gigs to date?

Muse’s show production from start to finish is the most insane, obnoxiously OTT thing you’ve ever seen in your life, but you can’t really think about it, you just have to do it.

One of the stages you played was a 360 stage..how did you manage that?

It’s trickiest for Connor, our singer, as he has to run around like a headless chicken, and we had to order longer leads for our guitars as I was trying to run around but I’d keep getting pulled back like a bungee rope. We’ve got used to it though and have adapted quite well now. The more we do it the more comfortable we feel.

So we last interviewed you as part of the BBC Academy at Open last year ahead of your Live Lounge performance. How did you find that experience?

Live Lounge is one of those things that’s great for a band to do. Radio 1 have always supported us, playlisting us and asking us to come in, so the last piece of the puzzle was for us to do Live Lounge. I remember thinking at the time it was quite a step up for the band and if you’d asked us at the time it was a definite highlight for us.

You’ve been signed since 2014 and have been incredibly busy since then, playing all sorts of festivals and being on tour with acts like Young Guns and Twin Atlantic. What’s been the highlight thus far?

Playing with Muse. It’s not only playing with Muse but the fact that we got to play on a huge stage to 33,000 people in Rome last year; it was absolutely insane. Also selling out The Electric Ballroom was great.  And finally, we go to Japan quite a lot as they love their music and it’s such a wacky place, we think it’s wonderful. There’s this club called New Lex in Tokyo; they give you a VIP area, bring you over bottles of champagne with fireworks in, they’ve gone out and bought us cigarettes before and given us cash to get cabs home. It’s the best night out ever! We’ve been asked to play Summer Sonic Festival in Osaka and when we found out basically we were just excited to get back to the Lex for a fucking brilliant time!

You played Jimmy Kimmel’s show in the States recently. What sort of reaction did you get from that from the US?

It’s funny actually, when we go through Customs at the airport they’re normally a bunch of miserable bastards. When we told them we were going to be on Jimmy Kimmel they perked up, were really happy for us and were asking when it was going to be on TV! It shows you what a popular show it is, and it was exciting for us because the show gets millions of viewers so it introduces us to loads more people in the States.

So this tour is called the Under My Skin tour. What did you learn on your first sold out headline tour last year that will help you this time around?

We’ll request a bit more booze on the rider, and we’ll ask for mayo, because they never give you mayo at venues. They’re the two main things. The crowds like to sing to you which is nice, so Connor’s picked some really cool moments where the crowd will pretty much take over. It’s a really powerful thing when everyone’s in it together.

Have you started work on your new album yet?

Yeah, I don’t think I’m supposed to tell you but fuck it. We’ve got 10 songs we’re happy with and aren’t going to be recording it for another 8-10 months so basically we’re massively ahead of the game. We love writing songs and haven’t ever stopped.

You’ve got Sundara Karma, Stal and Black Foxxes supporting you on this tour – how come you chose them?

Black Foxxes we’ve known for a while cos their manager lives with us; he told us to listen to them and we really really liked them. We’ve had them on a few shows in the past and they’re great. Sundara Karma work with one of the same producers as us and they remind me of a new Arcade Fire sound. There’s something special about them for sure.

How do you all get on as a band?

Yeah we get on well. Obviously bands feel that they should say that even though they might have serious internal issues but we were all mates first. I’m cousins with our bass player so we’ve known each other for as long as I can remember. The dynamic is great between us all, everyone gets on, and offers something different in terms of personality. We’re all quite reasonable, rational and modest people so that helps!

How do you cope with groupies?

A lot of us have girlfriends so you don’t really think that way. We try and keep to boundaries with our fans as we wouldn’t want to feel like we had exploited or taken advantage in any fan in any way, so there’s part of us that draws the line. Yeah it’s happened in the past, but it’s one of those things you do need to think about. We respect our fans.

I think my favourite of your songs is Lover, Please Stay. What’s the history behind that track and is it one you play live?

Yeah we usually play it in the encore. Joe wrote that song, it was one of our first songs that we were proud of. It started as an acoustic song and then we did an album version with electric guitars. It’s a special song to us for sure.

Your songs are chockful of emotions.  Is it sometimes overwhelming to sing them live?

Do you want to hear a funny story? We were in Brussels playing a gig, and we came back on to play Lover, Please Stay for the encore. Connor had been ill for a week and he was worried about his voice. So he starts to sing the song, and towards the end where it gets really intense he stopped singing because his voice cracked ‘cos he was ill. But the crowd all started really emotional because they thought he stopped ‘cos he was getting choked up, ha ha! I was pissing myself laughing, but it worked in his favour!

Nothing But Thieves play the LCR on 20th April. Tickets available from ueaticketbookings.co.uk