Music
10 Jul 24

Pants On Fire - On Our Radar Q&A: "When the crowd have good energy, you have good energy"

Pants On Fire. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

Pants On Fire’s Finn, Ollie, Jeff and Kaelig discuss the origins of the band, their new line-up, and their headline show at Whelan's tonight

How was the band formed?

Finn: I used to be in a cover band – we mostly played Arctic Monkeys tunes, so we’d do a couple of gigs a year. Eventually, one of the members left and went on to BIMM, which is how I found out about it.

We were a three-piece for a while, and then we got Ollie in to do some original tunes – and we were all like, ‘We might as well just be a band now.’ We lined up our first gig, without really having a name or any songs. But then we had a few months to prepare, so we made a set together, came up with a name, and that ended up being the whole first album.

Your bassist and drummer, Matt and Mel, recently departed the band, and were replaced by Kaelig and Jeff – how has the change impacted your sound?

Finn: Well, we definitely got heavier. We already had two different styles to mix together – me and Ollie. Now we have four different creative heads to have inputs, so it’s great.

Jeff: And it’s funny, because now we really don’t sound like how we are on Spotify.

Ollie: Yeah, it’s a completely different band.

Jeff: We have a single almost ready, ‘Vodka Shampoo’, which should come out around August.

You’re about to play your biggest gig yet in Whelan’s Main Venue – how do you feel about it?

Kaelig: I’m so fucking excited, it’s gonna be great.

Finn: We’re going to put on a show and we have some great bands opening for us – Bees & Sawdust are a cool band from Galway that we know, and the lads Stingin' Rodgers from Donegal. And we’re going to have some MCs with us – because I feel like people don’t really do that anymore. It’s all the lead singer’s job to interact with the crowd. But for me, I feel like that’s hard – and we always just end up saying some stupid shit...

Kaelig: It will make the crowd have good energy – and when the crowd have good energy, you have good energy.

Pants On Fire play Whelan's in Dublin tonight (July 10). Tickets are available here.