The Bottom Line tell us they love getting weird. They came to the right place.
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
Kinda all over the place! Tom lives in Dorset, Max lives in Southsea now and me (Cal) and Matt live in a tiny village called Midhurst!
How did you meet?
Me, Matt & Max met in school. We had all been in bands before and having all previously broken up we were itching to start a new band. When we all found out we were in the same situation as each other, we started jamming and it went from there! In 2015 Tom joined the band having met him from Teddy Rocks Festival and we’ve been the same lineup ever since!
How long have you been playing as a band?
A long time. I think we started in 2009? so 10 years! We changed to The Bottom Line in 2011
Before you get sick of being asked… where does the band name come from?
It’s actually not as exciting as you may think. We used to be called Thursdays Bad Luck, we were this terrible like drunken pub band. We wanted to change up our name in 2011 but we were lazy and broke, we had shirts which had “TBL” in huge letters that we couldn’t sell if we changed our name so we just changed our name to The Bottom Line cause it had the same initials!
What are your influences?
It’s diverse. We try to listen as many new artists while on the road, rather than getting stuck in the same cycle of the same old bands otherwise it really does show in your music, and i think that’s where we went wrong a few times before with previous records. The new All Time Low record is great. But I think if we had to give an overall influence list it would be Sum 41, All Time Low, Good Charlotte, Lil Peep, A Day To Remember and SWMRS.
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
We have always had a big energy live show, and in this latest record we’ve really tried to portray that in the music itself. We wanted people to hear our music and instantly imagine that song in a venue packed full of people.
Do you have any particular lyrical themes?
A lot of the new record’s theme is based all around our personal experiences of being knocked back time and time again, and the monotonous feeling of having to get back up and doing it all over again until you succeed. But with that being said we kinda write about loads of things. We have a song about eating chocolate on the new record. But it’s written like a love song. We love getting weird!
What’s your live show like? How many shows have you played?
Since 2011 we’ve played 289 shows. We tour a lot! We put absolutely everything into our live shows. We like to bring big lighting shows, always getting the crowd involved at the earliest opportunity. I think the only way to truly understand our live show is to come see it for yourselves!
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
Always doing ridiculous crowd surfing bits. In Prague with The Offspring we played an arena to 7,000 people and I crowd surfed on an inflatable mattress all the way down to the sound desk and back while singing a song with the crowd. One time in Germany we built a 6 foot wide basketball hoop and got our tour manager to make his way into the crowd with it and made fans come up on stage and shoot hoops with these huge basketballs.
What kit do you use / guitars do you play / etc.?
Matt plays AD Drums, custom kits from the UK, They’re awesome!
Max is on all Ampeg, SVT pro head with SVT Classic 810 cab.
Me & Tom are both on Kemper with Marshall Cabs every time.
All mics, wireless systems, monitoring etc all by Sennheiser.
What, if anything, are you plugging/promoting at the moment?
We just released our first song from the new record called “Reasons” which went down amazingly! The video features some great artists like Simple Plan, Neck Deep, The Fever 333, Mayday Parade and more! We’re about to drop our new single “Gone” which will be our first song with Marshall Records! We can’t Wait!
What are your plans for 2019?
New record, new videos and hopefully touring the crap outta it!
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!
I think we’d love to be on something like an All Time Low support show, We very much share a similar demographic as them and it would be a great show! Opening would be our friends in Better Days, we took them on tour with us in January last year and they’re the most genuine hard working bunch of lads we’ve met. Check them out!
Header image by Charlie Raven
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