Harlikings - Interview

Ryan Tyler (guitar and vocals)
James Thomas (guitar)
Jamie Shortland (bass)
Nick Pringle (drums)

From Nottingham, this quartet fuse elements of Rock/Pop/Indie/Jazz, which is certainly a brave move! But they're a very new band, recently finishing third in the Future Sound of Nottingham competition, the future is looking very promising indeed. So much so, The Ordinary Boys had them as one of their support slots at their recent gig in Nottingham. Grace chatted to them to find out more.

Firstly how was it to support the ordinary boys at rock city?!

We loved it, obviously the crowd were there to see the ordinary boys but we seemed to get a good response, especially from our fans who were singing along to most of the songs. Made us hungry for more high profile gigs.

How would you describe your sound to people that maybe haven't heard of you before?

Mix of pop/rock/indie. We find it hard to compare ourselves to other bands because we do believe we sound different, in a recent review we were said to sound like 'good times, songs to make memories to'.

Who would you cite as your musical icons for making you want to be in a band yourself?

We love what White Lies are doing at the moment, as a band we've watched them from playing to 10 people in an empty tent at Leeds festival to packed venues in Coventry and this year's Leeds festival. In terms of musical icons, we love watching Glastonbury headliners, hoping that one day we'll be playing to as many people.

You've released your ep, 'We are Harlikings' online, how has that gone? What are your favourite tracks from it?

We've sold the majority of our physical copies at gigs and people seem to be giving it good feedback. Our favorite tracks are Seven Months and Catch 22. We've learnt from this release and are excited to be potentially releasing a new one next summer. We've also got a couple of tracks up for free download on our Facebook page.

You say you formed 'as if by fate' whats the story behind this?

Maybe we need to change our bio, that sounds cringey! Well, Ryan, Jamie and Nick started playing for a one night only Beatles cover band, realized they sounded good together so started jamming to a few more covers, eventually decided to thicken the sound by adding Jammo. As we started to play more gigs we seemed to get more and more positive feedback so started to write our own songs, which people enjoy and constantly are asking to hear more.

What was it like when you were starting out as a band? Where did you start practicing?

We started practicing at a local youth centre called 'The Shed' this was a great place to start writing our own songs as we could practice for free. We then realized to perform well live we needed to practice with a full PA system and now practice at 'Dog House Studios'. We started writing steadily, we still haven't got an album worth of our own songs because we like to take our time making sure we've got the right sound for each song, and make sure it's a song we can perform live, because that's the best thing about being in HarliKings.

What are your plans for 2012? Any tours or releases?

Firstly we'll be playing a headline gig in Nottingham to showcase our new songs. We'll then be recording some of these songs, which will probably be released around easter time. We're also planning a production with a different style of music, but we can't say anything more about this yet as we're still in planning stages, more developments will be on our facebook page ( www.facebook.com/harlikings ). We're also hoping to do a mini tour in the summer to the most popular places, possibly London, Manchester, and Sheffield.

Interview by Grace