The Slow Readers Club

In advance of their first Northern Ireland show, the band are interviewed by State.ie. On whether 2015 was a breakthrough year.

Yeah it definitely felt like a step up, in Manchester we have gone from playing venues like the Night and Day to selling out Manchester Gorilla. We’ve been touring a lot too and building our fan base in different cities, Sheffield, Glasgow, London and more recently Dublin have been great to us. We also played some decent festivals last year with Isle of Wight and Ramsbottom festival being highlights. We’ve had a good few plays from BBC 6 Music and Radio X in the UK and the support from TXFM Dublin has been phenomenal. Our single ‘Don’t Mind’ featured on Steve Lamacq’s round table. 2015 was fantastic but things have kept building this year too, it’s a really exciting time for the band and for the fans that have followed us.

The band are interviewed after their show,supporting James, in Manchester. Aaron:

The first gig we played in Bristol, I shit myself. I was like, I never want to do this ever again. What am I doing? We’d done our own tour before, but this was in front of a few thousand people that were cold. I just went into myself, but after a few shows it was alright…It’s been amazing watching James be so relaxed about it.

They also reveal that the acoustic performance on the tour was because David Whitworth’s  twins were born.

The band is interviewed by Mouth magazine, from their Manchester rehearsal rooms. They talk about the James tour:

We’ve been very warmly received by [James] fans and the band. The most we’d done on our own was 600, but the lowest  for James was 2500 going up to 5000, and then 20,000 at the Arena. They couldn’t have made us feel any more welcome.

And new music:

Aaron: The intention is, for the Ritz gig that we’ll have a few tunes. We’re kicking around six or seven ideas that aren’t sort of fully formed yet. It’s usually me that holds it up. I wait for the last minute for the lyrics.

The band are interviewed by Skiddle, where they describe 2016 as “mind-blowing”.

We supported James in May on ‘The girl at the end of the world’ tour and played venues up and down the country including Kentish Town Forum, Brixton Academy and Manchester Arena. We were blown away with the support we got from James and their fans. Jim and Saul from the band would watch our set pretty much every night. We had to do an acoustic set for one of the gigs as David our drummer was unavailable. I think Saul could sense we were a bit nervous and surprised us by joining us on stage to play violin on a track of ours called Forever In Your Debt…Manchester will always be the centre of our universe, it always feels great to play Manchester especially recently our show at Gorilla at the end of last year was unreal. We were all really proud of getting that far so the Ritz should be another level again…We are writing in the run up to the Ritz so should have a new track or two, we will also be writing more in the new year. I guess we will tour again once we have a bulk of new stuff.

The band are interviewed by BBC Manchester before their Ritz concert. James Ryan:

It’s been the best year for the band so far. In December last year we were playing Gorilla over the road. And that sold out, but if you had said then in a year’s time we’d be over the road at the Ritz, we wouldn’t have believed it.

Aaron Starkie:

We’re an unsigned band, so to be able to do this…and it’s just social media’s been great. James support has been great. And the fans.

What’s next:

Aaron: There’s men in suits have come up from London.
James: We’re writing, we want to do another album as well.