Out Of Sight Interview

Out Of Sight are certainly a band to look out for in the future. After supporting Boys Like Girls on their headline tour and being announced as one of the first UK bands to perform at Slam Dunk Festival 2010, the band have been going from strength to strength. They have most recently announced that they are supporting American favourites Every Avenue. I caught up with Jake and Sean from the band before their support slot with Boys Like Girls at the Garage in Glasgow.

Where did the name of the band come from?
Jake: Eh that question! It actually came from sitting in a hot tub with a friend and he just randomly said it. We were changing band names at the time.
Sean: We used to be called Not A Clue.
Jake: Yeah, back in the day, when we just started at thirteen years old and yeah he just randomly said; ‘How about Out Of Sight?’ and we were like ‘Alright!’
Sean: Shows how lazy we are!
Jake: You know band names are always hard aren’t they, I always think with band names you don’t even think about it half of the time. It’s just like a brand really something to recognise us all by. That’s kind of the whole story.
For some reason I thought it was going to be a connection to the saying ‘Out Of Sight, out of mind’…
Sean: Isn’t there a film called that? I’m sure there’s a film called ‘Out Of Sight’.
Jake: Yeah! With George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. We should claim that, but I don’t know why we’d name it after that film.
Sean: It’s a pretty boring story, we should probably make one up, something about the film… like one of us was in the film.
Jake: [Laughter] Yeah, there’s nothing exciting about that.

Where do you find your inspiration for your songs?
Sean: Well for me anyway just general life I guess, I just write whatever I’m feeling, whether I’m complaining about something or appreciating something. It’s a time in our life where a few things happened in the time when we wrote that album, like good and bad things. There’s a lot of happy songs on the album but there’s a few sadder songs too.
Jake: The sadder songs are like trying to look at the brighter side, so it’s not necessarily depressing! It’s trying to inspire a positive spin on everything, that’s the feel we generally go for, like an uplifting feel with our songs so far.
Sean: Obviously we like writing songs about having a good time, getting drunk and partying so we have a few of them.
Jake: Yeah, there’s songs about like finishing work when you can’t wait for the weekend, just everyday stuff and there’s also a song about passing away. It’s kind of a mixed bag really.

Sounds good! If someone hadn’t heard your music, how would you describe it to them and if you could urge them to listen to one song, what would it be and why?
Jake: These are good questions!
Sean: This is the hardest question, you can take that mate!
Jake: [Laughter] Cheers! Hmm, which one would I pick….
Sean: I know what I’d pick. We have a song called ‘Where Do We Go From Here?’ which is going to be the name of our album. Something happened and it’s quite an important song to us.
Jake: Someone very close to us passed away.
Sean: We didn’t wanna write this song and make it specific to that, we wanted to branch it out so people could relate it to other things, like losing something but trying to look on the bright side. For me that was the most important song I’ve ever written and it’s quite amazing playing it, really meaningful.
Jake: I think generally for our band as it was written from a band point of view, as opposed to personal. We all chipped in with lyrics for that song as well, which is different to the way we usually do it anyway.
Sean: It’s usually like one person or two.
Jake: Yeah, but that song everyone was a couple of lines here, a couple of lines there. I think it came across how we wanted it to, so I was pretty happy with it.

Are you looking forward to playing Slam Dunk?
Sean: Very!
Jake: I can’t wait!
Sean: Last year was amazing and now we have two days, so it’s gonna be crazy!
Jake: Lots of bands that we’ve made friends with are going to be playing, I don’t even know who else is playing at the moment.
Yeah only a few have been announced!
Sean: Yet the line up is amazing already.
Jake: For the price its such good value for money, especially as it has something like 40+ bands.
Sean: We can’t wait. It’s amazing to be one of the first British bands to be announced, we feel privileged for that.
Jake: It was very nice of them!

How did it feel when you had your ‘Introducing’ feature in Kerrang?
Jake: That was quite a big moment, the first time, ’cause you know you have a photoshoot specifically for Kerrang. Every time we have done it before was for promo pictures, but it was an actual photo shoot for magazine. It was the first page spread, the first ‘hey check out this band’ thing. A lot of bands get it now but it definitely helps!
I think from a reader’s point of view, it definitely introduces you to bands that you might not have heard of.
Jake: Yeah like even if you’ve heard the name, it like reassures you to check them out and pay attention.
Sean: I think it’s cool. It’s so weird, my family talk to me about my band as if its a hobby type thing and when they first saw me in a magazine they were like ‘oh! its actually kinda serious!’ [laughter] which was kinda cool.
Jake: Your always trying to prove to your family, like reassure them.

What made you decide to perform the cover of Black Eyed Peas – I Gotta Feeling?
[Laughter]
Sean: It’s just a party song.
Jake: It just seems to work. Whenever I first heard that song, I thought the chorus sounds like they’ve covered a rock band. I thought that chorus could just be a big rock band playing that, obviously minus the rapping [laughter] but I just thought it would work. We wanted to it a while ago, but we kinda gave up on it. We wanted to do something different for this one, cause we’ve been doing a cover of The Killers and yeah we’re pretty happy with it.
Sean: There’s so many words to remember though.
Jake: A lot of words we still don’t know of really.
Sean: I just pretend though.
[Laughter]
Sean: It’s fun and its just a bouncy song!
Definitely is like a party song!
Sean: Yeah, to get you in a party mood!

What would be your dream tour line up?
Both: Woah.
Jake: These are good questions!
Sean: Does it have to be serious?
No, it can be ridiculous, anything you want!
Jake: OK easy. You do one I’ll do one…
Sean: OK. Can you go first?!
Jake: I’ll go the Killers straight away.
Sean: What, headlining?
Jake: No, they don’t have to be headlining.
Sean: Well I’m going to do a full line up!
Jake: Well you do your full line up then.
Sean: I’m gonna go Coldplay headline… then Kings Of Leon main support and then [Pause] this is really tough… Alicia Keys.
Jake: How many are you gonna go for?! [Laughter] Go on keep going!
Sean: And then…[pause] I’ll leave it at that for the moment.
Jake: I’ll go Coldplay headlining, Killers main support and, I’m only going to do a 3 round bill, then The Starting Line… [Laughter]
Sean: That’s a good choice! Oh I wish I could get back to you on that one! I feel like I wanna wait a day and really think about it but I’ll leave it at that at the moment!
Jake: It’s quite a good fantasy thing. You could make up so different ones, you can try to suit your bill to your audience. I’d like to have Foo Fighters in there as well.
[Laughter looking at Sean’s puzzled face]
Jake: He’s gonna be thinking about this for days now!

Sorry for getting that one stuck in your head! So what’s next for Out Of Sight?
Jake: Well the next thing will be hopefully announcing a release date for the album and then releasing it, hopefully a tour around Slam Dunk.
Sean: Hopefully we will be touring summer, nothings confirmed yet so we don’t really know.
Jake: This was kind of short notice actually, we only found out like two weeks ago.
Sean: So we don’t really know, but exciting things are happening behind the scenes!
Jake: We are gonna get writing cause its always good to write, keep working on the new songs.

Finally, Could you describe the band in 3 words?
Jake: Sarcastic…
Tour Manager: Out Of Sight?
Both: Yeah!
Sean: I’m gonna go for idiots… rubbish and…
Ted: …Genius!
Sean: Genuis, yeah! That’s good. That’s my three…What you got mate? You need three.
Jake: Sarcastic… genius…
Sean: You can’t use mine!
Jake: That was actually his…
Sean: But you can’t steal it!
Jake Sarcastic… It’s hard, I could just be boring and go fun.
Sean: Don’t! Come on. Don’t let me think of it for you.
Jake: I can’t think of anything…
Under Pressure!
Sean: It’s not hard mate come on. I came up with three.
Jake:Two! Come on, give me another one.
Sean: [Pause] We’ve got three anyway. Stupid?
Jake: You’re just going stupid, talentless, rubbish…
Sean: Then I’m going to go… great! Yeah that’s it. We’ve got about seven now!

Check out the band’s Myspace here.