We’re on a roll with our Band of the Day features again, and love constantly dragging up new acts we’ve not heard of before. The best thing is, we never seem to run out! Today’s bunch of miscreants are Sail. Read on to find out more about them…
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
Hullo! We are Sail from the South-West of England. Kynan (Scott, vocals/ bass) and Charlie (Dowzell, vocals/ guitar) live in Devon whilst Tim (Kazer, vocals/ guitar) and I (Tom Coles, drums) live in Somerset. For those of you not familiar with the Devon/ Somerset divide, think cream tea vs cider (cider wins).
How did you meet?
Charlie and I met in college when we started playing together (terribly). After a few passes at doing band stuff Tim joined; whilst at uni I met Kynan and once I’d graduated and we were searching for a bassist we asked him to join. Once we were all together it was obvious that we were all on the same wavelength for music and, importantly, memes.
How long have you been playing as a band?
Charlie and I have been playing since we were sixteen; we were in a band with Tim called Theories of Revolution, then we officially started Husk in 2013 before re-naming as Sail in October 2016.
Before you get sick of being asked… where does the band name come from?
Once we decided we were going to re-name, we decided on a name that offered us scope to put out a wider range of music; we felt Husk was a little limiting. It’s not a reference to anything; we wanted something short, straightforward and memorable.
What are your influences?
Our primary influences are American sludge bands like Torche, Red Fang and Baroness but we’re also influenced by a lot of contemporary pop music; we listened to a lot of Lorde and St Vincent when were writing Slumbersong. We also really like synthesizers and have been listening to a lot of 80s electronic music recently.
As a drummer I’m influenced by musicians like Brann Dailor and John Sherman for their power and inventive fill-heavy styles. Recently I’ve been influenced a lot by dudes like Adam Betts from Three Trapped Tigers who’s doing loads of cool stuff with electronics integrated into his kit; I’d love to branch into that some day.
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
We play a more psychedelic take on the sludge metal that influences us; we like to think we’ve sharpened our songwriting over the years we’ve been together and we always try to present that as a focal point of our sound. We also focus on big vocal harmonies; not a unique feature by any means but heard less in heavy music.
Do you have any particular lyrical themes?
Not especially; on Slumbersong we made reference to “gold” and other precious metals quite a lot, and generally when we look at releases we like to have vague lyrical themes running throughout. We spend a long time working out lyrics and placements but we steer away from trying to make thing sound super-deep (is anything cringier than messing that up?)
What’s your live show like? How many shows have you played?
We’ve been playing as Sail throughout this year but we played stacks of shows as Husk; I’ve no idea how many it’s been but we’ve had an especially busy year and we’re excited for it to get even busier once the tour starts.
We try to make our live show as energetic as possible and riff off one another. With big choruses it’s cool to see peole singing along so we try to encourage that. Generally when we’re playing it’s a good time so energy levels are pretty high!
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
We’ve had a few crowdsurfers; we recorded a video to a live crowd and a dude broke the ceiling of the venue, which was pretty impressive.
What kit do you use / guitars do you play / etc.?
I’m playing a Tama Starclassic kit which is fantastic; I played a frankenkit previously which was fine but a little tired-sounding. I’m mostly using Sabian AAX cymbas with a few Zildjan effects bells, but for the tour I’ve invested in a crash cymbal from a guy called Matt Nolan who makes instruments for Björk. I’m pretty excited for that to arrive.
Charlie plays a dizzying collection of Les Pauls that increases at the speed of overdraft, Tim is in love with his PRS and Kynan plays a sweet Fender jazz precision bass. Their pedal collection expands exponentially.
What, if anything, are you plugging/promoting at the moment?
This ties into the next question; we’re heading out for a UK tour at the end of next month with our bros in Cybernetic Witch Cult. We’ve been planning this for ages so we’re excited to finally put our plans in motion!
What are your plans for the rest of 2017?
Aside from touring and then re-adjusting to normal life (whilst crying), we’re writing new material for an Undisclosed Recording Project. We don’t have many other shows planned so we’ll be taking the time to write until the new year, and we’ll be taking bookings for 2018 and organising tours. We’ve been road-testing new stuff and will have some new material to play for the tour!
If you were second on a three-band bill, which band would you love to be supporting and which band would you choose to open for you? A chance to plug someone you’ve toured with, or a mate’s band we’ve not heard of before!
We’re playing some pretty ace lineups on tour! We played with a sweet synthwave band called Siblings of Us recently, so playing with them again would be awesome. To headline, it’d be great to play with a band called Stupid Cosmonaut; they play synth-heavy doom, so really this would be an excuse to get the synths out. I really liked Stranger Things so bought a MicroKorg; this fantasy line-up seems like a good place to fantasise that I can play it.
From previous Band of the Day Three Kings High: What’s the best online resource for getting your music out there in your experience, and how do you use it?
We mostly use Facebook; we’ve been experimenting with adding videos to advertise tour dates and things like new merch. I wish there was a more interesting answer, but though we use other formats a lot (Bandcamp and Instagram mainly) we get the best response from Facebook.
On a related note, we found advertising was generally a lot smoother once we had a professional music video; shout out to Simon at Red Dog Production for his sick video skills! For aspiring bands we’d definitely recommend getting a decent video together; it gives promoters a visual aid for your music and makes you look like you’ve got your shit together.
From another BotD, Spylights: What do you do to stay inspired and creative during rough times?
We all have some other things we like to do if we’re not feeling band stuff; Kynan has just started a degree in graphic design and is an excellent photographer and Charlie and Tim like to draw and travel. I find baking is an excellent anti-anxiety measure; with the escalating threat of nuclear annihilation it looks like I’ll get the chance to do it some more.
And from The Blend: What do you put on your toast?
I am a Marmite fan but I’m pretty sure the others hate it, so I’m gonna go on record as saying Marmite.
