Six Quick Questions For New Hope Club

New Hope Club are about to support The Vamps on their UK arena tour (they’ve also been signed by the guys on their label, Steady Records. With the tour starting this weekend, we felt it would be a great idea to ask them Six Quick Questions.

EP: What’s the New Hope Club story?

NHC: George was the first member of NHC. He was playing pub gigs from a young age and posting covers and originals on YouTube. He got approached by a potential manager, who gave the prospect of being in a band. For about 2 months George was meeting different people to try them out for the band. Nothing really worked out until George met Blake. The two got on very well and started writing. I had just come off X Factor when the boys said they would like to meet up for a weekend. We had a great time writing, watching films and we all knew that this was the band! Our first cover was Wake up by The Vamps in October 2015!

EP: You’re going on tour with The Vamps this week and you’re signed to their label – how cool is that – and how did that come about?

NHC: We are very much looking forward to going on tour with The Vamps! We had a great time last year playing their song ‘Cecilia’ on stage with them. This tour will be a lot different for us because we will have our very own set with some new original music! We are lucky enough to share the same management as The Vamps and that is how we met. They have been great mentors to us and are always giving us advice and tips.

EP: You’ve got a great relationship with your fans – how important is it to you to maintain this, and to what extent do you feel social media plays a part in this?

NHC: We named our band ‘New Hope Club’ because we like the idea of everyone being apart of a big ‘Club’. It is very important to us that we engage with our fans through social media because not everyone has the chance to meet us or come and see us live. We recently discovered Musical.ly (@NewHopeClubBand) where we like to do live covers and collaborating with other musers like Lisa & Lena!

EP: What’s your take on the current state of the music industry – what would be your advice for anyone wanting to get into it?

NHC: Social media is bigger and more powerful than ever so posting covers online to get yourself seen is the best start. There are so many people in the industry today, so being creative and original is even more important. Do what you do best and something good will come out of it. That’s what we try to do.

EP: Who are your inspirations – musically and personally – and what are your musical influences?

NHC: We love Bands and Artists that are relatable to us. That write their own music, and play instruments. Bands like The Beatles, Oasis and more recently Catfish & The Bottlemen are massive influences on us. All of these bands are great live performers and are people to look up to when it comes to owning a stage. Off the stage they have great personalities and are funny and just seem like normal people. We are just being ourselves and hope people will see us the same way in the future.

EP: What question do you wish someone would ask you in an interview but nobody ever does?

NHC: Not many people ask us how we came about writing our own songs. For example, Perfume, our first original song as a band, was a little verse idea that I had that said “People come and go”. I took the idea to George on Skype whilst Blake was at school and we wrote a little more of the song. We later finished off the idea as a band backstage at a Manchester show. We then played the song at the same show and the response by our fans was amazing!

About the author

Lisa has been writing for over 20 years, starting as the entertainment editor on her university newspaper. Since then she's written for Popwrapped, Maximum Pop, Celebmix, and ListenOnRepeat.

Lisa loves all good music, with particular fondness for Jedward and David Bowie. She's interviewed Edward Grimes (Jedward), Kevin Godley, Trevor Horn, Paul Young, Peter Cox (Go West), Brendan B Brown (Wheatus), Bruce Foxton (The Jam), among many many more. Lisa is also available for freelance writing - please email lisa@essentiallypop.com

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