Grafted Interview: Forget Toxic People and Get Drunk Instead

Four piece Basingstoke band, Grafted, chat to us about their latest single and new music on the horizon. There's a promising future for this young band, describing themselves as featuring gritty pop and indie sounds, they're bound to hit the new music scene by storm.

Introduce yourselves, how did you all meet, what instruments do you play? I'm Daisy, and I sing and play rhythm guitar, I'm Luke and I play lead guitar, I'm Wellsy (other Alex) and I play bass, I'm Alex and I hit things with sticks.

Luke: Me and Alex met in secondary school and we always did musical stuff together and then I met Daisy and our former bassist Zoe in a college music class so we decided to form a band for a charity gig on a whim.

Daisy: Me and Alex met Wellsy in our 2nd year music class, he’d played shows for us before and we thought he was alright so we asked him to join when Zoe left.

What's the story behind the name Grafted? Alex: Luke got a phone call by the organisers of our first ever show that took place at our college and was asked to come up with a name on the spot because they were printing the posters and they was going to call us "Luke and Friends". So naturally Luke continued the theme of his 'grime production company' GRAFTERZ (you can decide whether we're being serious or not) and the name Grafted has stuck with us since. Daisy: Actually we were The Grafted for a very short period of time but people kept saying it sounded like The Wanted and that's not really the vibe we were going for. Maybe we will one day who knows...

How did you find the writing process for Sergei? Luke: We were just messing about in Alex's garage where we write most of our songs and Alex told me to just play any chord sequence which happened to be the intro for Sergei. I then came up with the riff as I got Daisy to play the chords. Daisy: It quite literally just came together in that rehearsal we had in the garage where we put together the main bulk of the song. I think that we had all been feeling inspired post Reading Festival 2015 as we wrote this only a couple of days after and it came as a surprise that we managed to pull something together without any real pre-conceived ideas. Luke: The lyrics are mostly based on forgetting people you don't need anymore and getting drunk instead. That's what I do anyway.

What was the inspiration behind the video for Sergei?

Luke: Forgetting people you don't need anymore and getting drunk instead.

Wellsy: We didn't even plan the Sergei video, our camera guy Robbo Turner just came along as we took loads of footage while celebrating Daisy's birthday and then just sorted out a few shots back at Alex's garage to finish it off. We wanted it to come across quite organic and raw which I think it did because it completely wasn't planned, and Rob just sent us this near completed video and we all liked the feel of it for our first video.

What are your shows looking like for this year? Daisy: We have a show at the Purple Turtle in Reading playing for BBC Introducing back supporting Sahara on August 23rd which we are excited to do as it will be out first show for BBC introducing. We're also currently in talks about our second tour later on in the year following the release of our debut EP. Really looking forward to playing places we haven’t played before.

Where do you see Grafted progressing in the next year? Luke: We're not really sure whats gonna happen apart from playing our music to the people who want to hear it and trying to write and release as many good songs as we can, but obviously we'd love to continue to progress, playing bigger and better shows and to reach as many people as we can we can with our tunes.

Which bands do you aspire to be like?

Wellsy: Even though stylistically we don't sound like them, we've always looked up to Sundara Karma as a band because they're literally just 20 minutes down the road from us, and their hasn't been that many big bands from round our area so it's sick to see that they've done it and hopefully we can follow in their footsteps.

Alex: We all absolutely love the early arctic monkeys music, we just love how gritty it sounds, and how relatable the lyrics are, we have bumped their first album way too many times on the way to gigs.

What's your typical rehearsal routine?

Daisy: I wish we could say we had one, if we have a gig we'll just run through our set, and if our show schedule is a bit more open we'll normally either just have a laugh and try to write new material.

Alex: When we rehearse we turn into a nickelback tribute band essentially...

Is there an EP in the works for the future?

Luke: We've finally finished recording our first EP after writing the songs near on two years ago, and we plan to release it later on this year. We can't wait to get it out there because it's something we're all proud of and there is some bangers on it so we want you all to hear them.

As you're in the early stages of you band, do you feel you can play with your sound more than other more established bands?

Daisy: Definitely, when we first wrote the song we have currently, none of us even listened to indie music besides the odd Two Door Cinema Club tune, so it was very organic and we weren't basing our sound off of anyone else which is something we're trying to continue with the new material that we're writing. We're just making the music that we like and of course hope that everyone else likes it too.

Wellsy: It's really easy to mess about with your bands sound when each member is into a massive variety of music, it varies from alex's shameful love of bring me the horizon to Luke's lifelong devotion to grime.

Luke: Like we love merging different sounds together, but don't get me wrong we wont be making any hardcore techno anytime soon!