What are your names?
Drew (lead vocals), Euan (Rhythm guitar), Ollie (bass), Luis (keys, backing vocals), Mark (drums)

What is your genre of music?
We take influence from a load of genres in our song-writing and producing style so we’ve often found that some of our tunes fit into categories that others just completely don’t. To tar everything with the same brush and use a broad term, we’d say our songs mostly fall into Indie Rock and Guitar Music. Although there’s elements of psychedelia in some of our music, acoustic singer-songwriter stuff, then there’s the Slowdance EP we put out and i don’t even know what you’d call that – not that its mind-bending, out of this world stuff, more like it just all fits into a theme that i haven’t seen any summarise into a genre yet (although my years in the planet are limited ill admit haha)

Give us a little bio about you and as a band.

We’re all from Manchester, i grew up in Handforth just a bit further out of town from Cheadle. The bass player grew up near Manchester Airport and Wythenshawe, the Rhythm guitarist is from Wilmslow and all 3 of us went to Wilmslow High School. I met Luis through playing with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra on a programme put together by Brighter Sound. From there, Luis introduced me to Mark who he met through studying at the Royal Northern in Manchester and we brought him on-board – thats the Rosellas you see now. We did our first gig in July 2019 at Cheshire Fest on the small acoustic stage and from there we’ve managed to put out three 5-track EPs & a single called ‘Born Under A Cloud’ in the space of about a year and a half. We found out the other day an all that we’ve just surpassed 50k streams across all our tunes, so thats cool. Pub gigs and small venues were pretty much all we were able to book onto when we started so we had the idea in August of hiring out a local community hall and putting on our own gig; this was the Festival Hall gig we did in Alderley Edge where we managed to sell over 200 tickets and pack the gaff out – it was a mega gig and a good way to kickstart it all off for us. Since then we’ve played numerous times in Manchester at venues like Night & Day, The Peer Hat & Band on the Wall, and ventured out to other northern cities like Sheffield, Leeds & Liverpool. We had a fair bit of momentum before Covid hit, but like everyone else we’re just knuckling down and getting on with it. We put out and acoustic EP got a new single recorded over the lockdown period and have made plenty of plans for gigs when it all blows over, so things are looking up.

What made you go into music?
I know for me personally it was always something I had a genuine affinity with, mind you I did hate doing classical grades as a kid! For as long as I can properly recall I’ve always had a guitar about, I think I got one for like my 9th birthday or something. Growing up in my house there was always music on and more often than not, that band was either Pink Floyd or Red Hot Chilli Peppers. I remember just obsessing over Frusciante and Gilmour’s playing and the melodies they both put into their music – they both still remain my favourite guitar players to this day. Once I’d gotten over the initial childhood dream of being an astronaut and going to the moon I settled for playing guitar ahaha! Im sure its a similar story with most of the other lads in the band, we’re all doing something that is purely a labour of love and something we’re all massively driven to succeed in due to this.

Who are your influences?

As a band we share quite a plethora of influences for sure. If we look into the song-writing side of things, its Euan and I who write the music. We share common ground on certain influences such as Oasis, The Stone Roses, the La’s & the Beatles, but we also differ who we hold in the highest regard for our own personal influence. Euan is a huge fan of the Smiths and Morrissey as a lyric writer and this often shows through in the way he writes some of our songs.

Bands /Artists he’s often told me has also influenced his writing are Echo & the Bunnymen, Shack, Neil Young and Bob Dylan. Lyrically i take most influence from writers like Noel Gallagher, Ian Brown (Stone Roses) and Richard Ashcroft (The Verve) as I started writing lyrics properly for my own music after I’d discovered the bands of the 80s and 90s North-West and taken to their music quite passionately. In terms of our sound and the feel of our music, this is where the sphere of influence increases. By having such a competent piano player in the band, we have been able to use the keys as a fore-front instrument in our tunes, and its quickly becoming one of the defining factors of the Rosellas sound. How we use the harmony of the guitars and keys is heavily influenced by bands like Oasis, Sam Fender and DMAs, all of whom Luis & I take certain elements from when crafting the sound of our songs. Growing up listening to Pink Floyd almost every day and having Euan in the band (who is also massively into Psychedelia) naturally encourages us to get elements of Psychedelic music into our songs – these elements can be heard most notably in our new single’s b-sides ‘The Edge’ and ‘inside’.  A band who I’ve always thought found a perfect sweet spot between Psychedelia and Indie Rock was The Verve, and since discovering them and delving deeper into their back catalogue, they have massively impacted the way I create the sounds of our bands tunes in the writing and demo-ing process.

Are you a signed?
Nah, its all us.

You are set to release your new single ‘Damaged’, tell us more about the single.
The lead track was written roughly 2 years ago, with The Edge and Inside coming about last year. I made demos of the tunes in my home studio and we sat on them for a while deciding how and when to release them. Since the very start we’ve always spoken to each other and the people we come across about the importance of b-sides to us. We are well aware that the traditional ‘b-side’ meaning no longer exists due to the impact of streaming platforms but for us its about being able to release longer, more experimental and non-con-formative tunes as the alternative to the single. For example, the b-sides on this single ‘The Edge’ and ‘Inside’ are each over 5 minutes long and have elements of all sorts in there. They aren’t typical 3-minute radio songs that are designed to be accessible for 12 year olds, they were more a way for me as the writer to just express freely what I wanted and not worry about ticking certain boxes. Damaged and The Edge were recorded at Mad Fox Studios in Bury and were mixed and mastered by our mate and producer Oliver Shillito. The 3rd track ‘Inside’ was recorded and mixed by myself and Oliver mastered the tune to blend it with the others on the single. The album cover was shot up in Dukinfield near where i work and ties in with the lyrics of the tune The Edge – we’ll let you guys as listeners draw the comparisons there.

Describe each track in two words.
For Damaged id say Energetic, Vibey. The Edge id say Euphoric, Visual. Inside i’d describe as Moody, Experimental.

Will we see a music video for ‘Damaged’?
Most likely not because we’d hardly be able to afford making one on a bloody iPhone at this stage haha!

What else can we expect in Early 2021?
We are playing an online Charity gig with the likes of Blossoms, Sam Smith, Fontaines DC and Slow Readers Club on 28th/29th January – info for this can be found on our social media. Other than that we plan to release a few things like acoustic versions, maybe some remixes, 1 or 2 other little tunes here and there. Anything to just keep everything ticking over until gigs come back full force.

Where do you see yourself now in 5 Years?
I’d like to be on holiday in the Maldives or something, early retirement, fame and fortune achieved and the tunes on the shelves of HMV for decades to come.

When you are at a gig, what are 5 things you cannot forget?
Depends how good looking the girl down the front is… Might forget the words then. When we’re playing and we’re all on this same wavelength of just absolutely having it and  the passion is just flowing through everything we do its actually impossible to think about anything else. Ill just turn and look at Euan or Luis and we don’t have to say fuck all to each other we just know that what we’re doing is absolutely shit hot and we share in this feeling of unlimited potential that nothing can stop. It sounds cliché to say it but when you’re up on a stage with a group of your best mates, playing tunes that YOU’VE written, recorded and rehearsed relentlessly as a group, and the crowd are absolutely loving it, that feeling doesn’t have a word – and for us that feeling has always been the same whether there’s 2 or 200 people in the audience. We haven’t even grazed the surface of big gigs yet so I can only imagine what that feeling can become.

Do you have social media accounts so your fans can follow you?
Yeah absolutely. You can put this link somewhere if you like as it directs everyone to the right places if they want to follow : https://linktr.ee/rosellasband
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