Common Side Effects - Interview

Danny - Lead Guitar/Vocals
Dom - Bass
Sian - Rhythm guitar
Tom - Drums
Will - Vocals

The Leicester music scene is notoriously difficult to crack, especially with a historic reduction in fair sized gig venues, the closure of The Charlotte and so on. There are however a good number of decent local bands in Leicestershire covering a wide variety of music genres. We had heard good things about Punk Rock band Common Side Effects from one of their recent gigs in Leicester, so we decided to nab them for an interview.

How would you describe your music, and what are your influences?

We'd describe our music as describe Punk Rock i guess, we use more than '3 chords' so we aren't like typical punk bands. Big influences to us as a band are bands like Rancid, Star F**kin Hipsters, Left Over Crack, Street Light Manifesto, NOFX, King Blues, and so many other bands even though all of us are into different types of music but it's amazing how we all have punk rock to agree on.

How did you get together and where did the band name come from?

Well originally we got together in high school when it was me and Danny, our mate Faye on drums and Louis on bass, we went through so many names and covered so many different songs, we changed bass players a few times till we settled with Will, and Tom got on the drums. After a gig one night Will said he didn't want to play bass anymore so moved to lead vocals, that's when Dom came into it. It was Danny that came up with the name, we can't remember how, but it just seemed to fit us so well when he came out with it.

How do you go about writing your material?

Usually Will has some lyrics written down, and we start jamming out a tune to that then start extending it, or even Sian and Danny come up with a solid chord and rhythm structure then work from there. sometimes it's easy but other times its a challenge but we love it!

What so far has been your best gig / moment?

We played an awesome gig at The Auditorium on July 10th where we picked up a decent size crowd on the outside stage, with people who didn't even come to watch us singing along to some of our songs, that was cool. but loads of gigs we've done have been memorable, like all the times playing at the square bar and partying with other bands and cool people after. The time we played at The Shed was amazing, when they turned all the lights out and we lit the stage up with glow sticks and threw them into the crowd!

What plans have you got for the future?

Hmmm good question... well we're definitely planning on recording all our new stuff and maybe doing a promo gig and sell an EP or album or something. we wanna get our own banner printed with tops and stuff. And I guess just get our name out more. We're not in it for the fame or the money, we do it because we love playing gigs and making music, and the after parties! haha.

Many thanks for your time!