INTERVIEW: INTRODUCING THIS STATE OF OURS

Announced as part of the lineup of Cavorts’ first hometown live date of 2014 are new band South Yorkshire band This State of Ours. I caught up with vocalist Kirsty Taylor to find out more about the band.

So talk us through the members of This State of Ours, where they’re from and what previous bands they’ve played in?
Well Me and Paul (drummer) are both from Swinton. Adam, our lead guitarist is from Rawmarsh. Oliver our Rhythm guitarist is from Doncaster and finally Craig, our bassist and backing vocals is from Rotherham! We’ve all played previously in other local bands, including VolumeZero and Catharsis Collapse.

What happened to VolumeZero? I saw you play at Hoifest in 2012, just after you released a great debut EP, but then you disappeared….
The split with VolumeZero was due to personal reasons that I don’t really wanna go too much in detail with, but I guess you could say certain members of the band didn’t really get on anymore, on a personal and musical level.

Describe the sounds of This State of Ours?
As for the sound of This State Of Ours, it’s hard to describe! We just all throw in our influences and created a mash up of styles I guess…it’s got a bit of everything thrown in!

When you first came together, did you dive straight in writing songs together, or did you muck around with some covers?
We started writing original music straight away and jammed with the odd cover just to get us going. It’s took us almost a year to get gigging though. We wanted to find ‘our’ sound I guess you could say. We had quite a bit more material we’d written but we scrapped it. Too picky! Haha

Why did you pick Capture Me as the first song to be recorded?
We all decided on ‘Capture Me‘ as our first single because it’s the song we wrote that we feel defined our sound. It’s not the strongest song in our set but it was the first one we wrote and were like yeahhhhhh that’s how we wanna sound!

The song features both female and male vocals which isn’t something you hear often? Is that going to be a permanent feature?
We’ve got five songs in our live set at the moment and only 2 of them have male and female vocals. I don’t think we’ll use them on every song, just the ones we feel it works best.

What are your influences as a vocalist?
One of my main influences as a vocalist is Josh Homme, from Queens Of The Stone Age. That man is a genius. As for female vocalists, it’s got to be Brody Dalle. Her other band called ‘Spinnerette’ is one I’m always singing along to haha.

You had your first gig recently? How was that?
Even though we have all been playing live in bands for years, we were all like teenagers again doing our first gig haha! It’s always nerve wrecking doing your first gig with a new band but we couldn’t be more happy with the feedback we’ve had so far!

What are your plans for This State of Ours?
The plan for us now is to keep writing stronger material and get our name out there, we are still in the early stages so I hope there’s lots more exciting things to come

We got you on the line-up for our Cavorts date at The Polish Club. It will be your first Barnsley gig. Excited?
We are mega excited for the Barnsley show! Especially to be sharing the bill with Cavorts, we went to see them live around a month back and they are sick! I would recommend anyone to check them out! On top of that, Barnsley has always had a strong music scene, so many good events throughout the year!

Photos courtesy of Dominic Jon Gregory.
Keep up to date with all news from This State of Ours by following their facebook page facebook.com/thisstateofours.
Download ‘Capture Me’ for free via reverbnation now reverbnation.com/thisstateofours/songs.
This State of Ours play Barnsley Rock And Blues venue The Polish Club on Saturday 26th April, with Cavorts, Shermer and DJ Mistress Darkside.