Check out this great interview that I got to do with Ryan Hyslop (guitar) and Oakley Moffat (drums) of UK based pop-punk band Trash Boat!
How did the band originally come together? Who approached who?
Oakley: Me and the guitarist Dan have known each other since we were very young. Around ten or eleven, I believe. We were always in bands. Eventually, we tried to take it seriously, and then we found Ryan, and a bassist. Then we changed our bassist. Dan, our guitarist, was originally the singer in another band, and we decided to change our sound a bit. Then we found Toby, our current singer now, and we just went from there. We really kick-started this year, and just went for it.
Your name is very interesting. I read that you named it after an episode of The Regular Show. Which episode was it?
Oakley: I think the episode was called “Trash Boat”. And basically, one of the characters (our singer knows the names, he’s obsessed with it) admired this rock star, and the guy had changed his name to two random words. So he’s sitting in this room, and he sees a bin with some trash, and then a boat, and comes up with the name. We didn’t want to use some random name. We thought that was random, but in a not random way. It stands out!
How long did the full writing process take for the “Look Alive” EP? From the first song idea to the final product?
Oakley: I don’t think it took a long time, but it was just very spread out, I think. I started writing the first song even before we had our singer. We were just writing ideas because we liked writing music. It just kind of snowballed since about last September until we finally made a name and a Facebook.
Ryan: We entered the studio in February, didn’t we?
Oakley: Yeah, so everything was done by then.
Ryan: And then we had the EP completely done by the end of March. It was released a few weeks ago,
Tell me a little bit about the album artwork. What does it represent?
'Look Alive' EP artwork.
Oakley: We found this guy who did some band artwork, and we just really liked his work. We didn’t quite know what we wanted, and we just went to him. We said “We’re called Trash Boat, just go for it.” He drew us that little man thing, and it kind of represented it with the flower and the speech bubble, and the name “Look Alive”. We thought it just worked. It came about really organically.
In terms of the way that you guys write the songs, do you have a set process, or is it different every time?
Oakley: I’ll usually have a guitar idea and record it myself. Then I’ll send it to everyone. We’ll do it like via email for the start. And then when we get everyone together, we kind of work on it and jam it out. But actually, the song “Marmalade” was written me and the guitarist just sat down before a band practice and said, “just play”. It just came out, so it’s different for every song.
Ryan: And obviously Toby writes whatever he feels. He does all the lyrics on his own. He’s got a lot to say!
The next two questions I ask to every artist that I interview. First: what kind of message would you like fans to walk away with after listening to your music?
Ryan: That’s a hard question!
Oakley: I think we just want people to enjoy what we love doing, basically.
Ryan: I want to just go out and enjoy that they’ve come to see us. Maybe let loose for a bit, shout a few words, as long as they enjoy themselves, we’re happy!
Second: what does music mean to you?
Oakley: Everything!
Ryan: It’s all we really do, isn’t it?
Oakley: It’s always been a huge part of our lives. Like, at our school we would choose music and music tech. We’ve always been going down this route of trying to make our lives revolve around music.
Ryan: And everything band related usually comes first among other things. We see it as something that we love to do. We love playing shows. I’m sure every band says, it, but we love doing it. It’s good fun!
Last question: what are the future plans for Trash Boat? If there’s any new music, tour dates, videos, or anything else you want to let fans know about, go for it!
Oakley: Well we’ve actually just started writing the next EP! We wanted to wait until this one was finished until we started writing for the next one. It just kind of felt weird, writing it when it’s not even out yet, so we just waited for a bit for that. I terms of tour dates, we’re playing with Rome at the Garage in London next week.
Ryan: We’ve got a bunch of shows lined up on our Facebook. There’s quite a few shows coming up. We should have some cool plans in the works. Nothing confirmed at the moment. Hopefully we can release some stuff soon. We’re just waiting on confirmations right now. Stuff to look forward to! I’m sure there will be more music out soon.
Trash Boat's debut EP 'Look Alive' is available now.
This has been another shameless promotion.