The Riot Tapes on The Apprentice tonight

On tonight's episode of the Irish version of The Apprentice, Bill Cullen's candidates must produce a compilation CD featuring up-and-coming Irish musicians. It means choosing from a shortlist of 30 Irish acts and one band set to feature prominently are indie six-piece The Riot Tapes.

The winning team will have their compilation released with a forthcoming copy of The Irish Daily Mail – giving a massive boost to the ten selected acts – and whilst we don't know who has won as yet, judging by the promotional clips for the episode, The Riot Tapes were heavily involved in the on screen action.

Aside from The Apprentice, Riot Tapes are currently enjoying a big radio push for their first single 'Photograph' and are set to co-headline a gig in Dublin's Grand Social with Storyfold on Saturday October 15. Admission is €10 and you should move quickly if you want to catch it as it is close to selling out.

We caught up with Chris O'Brien from the band as they prepared to watch the show.

"The first commercial they aired had that contestant Chris going [frantic on the phone] 'Can you hear me Chris? Chris! Chris! Can you hear me?!' – I'm the 'Chris' at the other end of the phone!" O'Brien laughs. "This is where all of the drama comes out and tonight we might see something crazy."

According to O'Brien, an American ex-pat who teamed up with Elaine Doyle to form the hotly-tipped act in 2009, "something like 1500-2000 bands entered for this thing."

So how did The Riot Tapes get involved with The Apprentice in the first place?

"It was completely random. The Daily Mail ran a contest without telling anyone what it was about. It was the weirdest contest I've ever seen because it didn't have any description of the prize.

"It was basically: 'send an mp3 to this address along with a paragraph about the band.' We entered and two months later, we got an email saying, 'congratulations! We're still not going to tell you what it's about but you've made it to the shortlist!'

"It also said we needed to come down to this dance studio with the band. We were like, 'whaaaat?!' So we put on our leotards – not really – and headed down. We showed up and there was 29 other bands standing around all looking as confused as us. They made us sign a non-disclosure agreement' and one of us noticed the other party on the agreement was the Irish Apprentice.

Apparently this didn't sit too well with some of the other acts. "There was immediately some very disgruntled noises from the other bands: 'we're not going to be on reality TV' and other bands that were worried they were going to be contestants," says O'Brien. Out of all this disgruntled chitter chatter, only one band left, as you might expect. They just announced 'we've had enough of this, we'll never sell out dude!' and left – [jokingly] And that was the end of their career!"

"They finally explained the idea behind it after we'd signed and it actually sounded pretty cool."

We'll have to wait until this evening to find out exactly what that entails and the final outcome for the bands and contestants alike but, at the very least, the national exposure appearing on TV3 brings is invaluable for an emerging act.