Rising To The Masses: Straight For The Sun

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Before the first riffs echo through the fields of Catton Park, we are diving head first into the pulse-pounding world of the New Blood Stage at Bloodstock 2024. So grab your backstage pass, tune your senses, and join us as we explore the stories, inspirations, and the relentless drive of the bands who are rising to the masses! Introducing Straight For The Sun…

How would you describe your band to someone who’s never heard you?

High-energy, genre-bending alternative metal music. Most of the time with a catchy chorus and heavy breakdowns, but always bringing a party mood and a chaotic live show to match

Tell us about your band’s origin story. How did you all come together?
The band began as a rapid dash to fill a gig slot given to our guitarist Tom. This introduced him to our other guitarist Pauly and the decision to move to playing modern alternative metal. Jamie on drums, Callum on vocals and Oz on bass followed soon after we had all mixed in some way in other musical projects, each person bring their unique take making the band sound like it does today.

What song would you recommend for someone’s first listen of your band?

Describe your songwriting process. How do you create your music?

Its is chaotic as the songs themselves if we’re honest. Usually Tom or Pauly will work there guitar lickin’ magic creating a riff or sections of a song, but we then find getting together actually playing the song is where the song builds into something special. However, this does usually end up with the songs going on a rollercoaster of directions and styles before we’re finished.

How do you handle creative disagreements within the band?

Creative disagreements we don’t necessarily see as a bad thing. It opens up a discussion and often gives a new preceptive, but you have top be open to new ideas. After that though, we honestly go for a sacred rule in this band which is by having 5 members, a band vote will always give a major to a decision.

What are your musical influences?

As a band our influences differ between each member, but we feel that might be our biggest strength as a band. Although, we often meet in the middle with bands such as Avenged Sevenfold, Pendulum, Alter Bridge, Bring Me The Horizon and While She Sleeps to name a few.

What’s the story behind your band name?

It 100% came from the when we all sat around the TV with hot drinks and watched the 1965 classic television programme Thunderbirds; episode 11 of season 1 entitled “Sun Probe”. I believe it was Callum who then said after hearing how Thunderbird 3 did not alter course and ‘She’s heading straight for the sun!’ that he said “that would be a good band name”.

What’s your guilty pleasure music outside of metal?

Our aux cable ‘two song pass’ on route to any gig often shows up some 2000s Pop, 90s Trance and Drum and Bass. Also ’Rasputin’ – Boney. M, the Pokemon Theme song and ‘Vengabus (We Like to Party)’ – Vengaboys.

Tell us about your most memorable live performance or tour experience.

We were lucky enough to be invited to play ‘The Cave’ in Amsterdam last year. We desperately wanted to so decided to save money we would avoid getting accommodation in the city and stay awake for 30 hours to play the show. We got to see the amazing city, eat some great food, played an awesome show and partied afterwards with guys from Machine Head.

What’s the most challenging aspect of being a metal band in today’s music industry?

The closure of venues across the UK effects the industry massively, especially as a grassroots level. The fans and musicians are there, but with less and less venues able to stay afloat now-a-days the opportunities for live music is getting smaller. Which in turn makes it harder for bands to grow as well.

Any advice for other aspiring metal musicians?

It’s important to push yourself as a band, be that creatively and to take opportunities when they come. This will lead to mistakes to learn from, but you will become a stronger and more well-adjusted band due to this. Also be nice to people, no one likes a band who’s rude.

What’s next after Bloodstock for the band?

We’ve got a lot of new music in the locker ready for release, and we may be organising, what’s it called? A collective of gigs one after another in different cities across the UK, one of those.

Have you faced any challenges as an unsigned band? How do you overcome them?

Setting goals for the future we find is key, deciding this year what we want to achieve and how that will set us up for next years goals. It also set deadlines and pressure, which without in the past has lead us to be lazy and procrastinate. Also, as cheesy as it sounds, set high, what may be unrealistic goals. As long as you are adaptable, it will push you to places you never expected to get to.

How do you stay motivated during creative slumps?

This seems like the wrong thing to say but taking time away and being creative in another way we find important. We have other hobbies from sport to nature and animals to lego, which is important to have as you can’t keep up the high intensity writing all the time without some release. Also, if you’re not feeling it creative, trust in your other band mates to ‘cook’, often if they are ‘cooking’ it will inspire you as well.

Space Pistol are set to play The Hopical Storm New Blood Stage On Sunday 11th August 2024.