Upon hearing that the London based indie-folk-pop girlband called TRILLS are releasing their new single 'Super Blue Moon' on November 15th, I got in touch with them and asked if they’d be up for answering a few questions, the stars clearly aligned as they said YES! We chatted about how the band formed, breaking London and who would be headlining at their very own 3 day music festival….

You’re a London-based indie-folk-pop quartet called TRILLS, tell me something about the band that not many people would know about you….

We first met our manager at an 80th birthday in Suffolk where we'd been roped in to sing some a cappella folk songs. We started losing the will to live when we were asked if we were the 'sexy cabaret'....but then this dude came up to us who eventually because our manager so it was worth it in the end...!

I read that the band started after a busking trip to Slovenia, this doesn’t sound like the usual place to start a band, tell me more about the trip….

We literally sang for our supper. If we'd had a good day busking, we'd treat ourselves to a proper meal; but if not we'd eat rice cakes and tinned soup. One day an old lady bought us all hot dogs because she felt so sorry for us. And then another day this stag do saw we were English and invited us to join them on a boat trip down the river, with them all dressed like cowboys. Think at one point we even tried to make mulled wine using shitty red wine and a herbal tea bag. It was a weird and wonderful trip and we wrote our first song in the hostel we were staying in, surrounded by Belgian boy scouts hahaha.

Please introduce each band member and tell me what they do in the band

We're kind of unusual in that we all do the singing, swapping around the lead vocals for different songs, with the rest singing harmonies. But aside from singing there's Alicia (drums), Imo (violin, keys, guitar), Seraphina (keys, synth), and Tallulah (guitar, bass).

I imagine that you all bring something different to the table when it comes to musical influences, which of your many influences would you say has impacted you all as a band?

It makes us sound HELLA un-rock & roll but three of us were in choir together at school, which I think had a massive impact on our ability to arrange harmonies the way we do.

Do you tend to argue when working on new material or does it come together easily?

If we argue it's about really niche micro details like one particular word someone doesn't like in the lyrics. Sometimes we'll have worked on a song for a while and then one of us will be like, 'I actually just don't really think I like any of it' which can be awkward. But we don't really argue as a whole. We all hate confrontation too much ha!

London can be a fickle place, it’s full of unforgiving audiences and can sometimes be a tough city to ‘win over’, did you find it a struggle in the early days?

YES GOD YES. Especially because back in the early days when we were singing all this twee shit with ukuleles and acoustic guitars, promoters would sometimes sandwich us between metal acts like we were the palette cleanser LOL! But it was just so incongruous and we were so uncomfortable. Also we had rubbish mic technique and would often all be singing at the same time all the time, so the sound engineers would just throw their hands up like I CAN'T HELP YOU when the frequencies would start clashing and feeding back. It was a steep learning curve.

You played Glastonbury, tell me about the experience…

We played West Holts on the Saturday night and it was INSANE. Our producer Johan Hugo has a band called The Very Best, and we wrote a song with them a few months before Glastonbury, so when they started figuring out their set list they asked us to join them as special guests along with The Temper Trap, Baaba Maal, and Afrikan Boy. It was the year that the weather was the worst it had been in decades - torrential rain and oceans of mud - but when we came on stage the sun came out and a rainbow stretched across the stage... it was unbelievable.

Your new track ‘Super Blue Moon’ (which is out on Nov 15th) was written for Tallulah Brown’s show ‘Songlines’, how did you come to write the track for her?

Tallulah is part of TRILLS but her other job is being a playwright. She wrote this play ‘Songlines’ about adolescence and love and disappointment and sexuality and wanted music to intersect each scene, so we ended up writing about 8 tracks in total for the play. Then Tallulah and Seraphina joined the cast to sing the songs live on stage during the show's run last year. We loved Super Blue Moon so much we decided to record it properly and release it as a single.

You say that the track “touches on the anxieties and loneliness of adolescence“, is it based on personal experience or by things that you see happening around you?

Both. We can remember how isolated and confused and anxious we were as teenagers, and how all these emotions and hormones come flooding at you and you haven't figured out what they mean and how to deal with them yet. You're so vulnerable at that age, but you're also trying desperately to fit in and every crush feels like the world will just end if they don't feel the same. It's exhausting. But there's also something beautiful about that time where you're on the cusp between childhood and adulthood, and you're still so naive about the world and your emotions are so pure.

I read that your music has featured on hit TV show Orange is the New Black and also The Morning Show, how does it make you feel when you hear your music whilst watching TV? Is it different from hearing yourself on the radio?

It's awesome and quite weird. We tend to write in a really narrative way - because there's four of us we'll draw on all our personal experiences and then come up with a story to anchor the song around. So to see our music help other stories come to life, especially ones that are so powerful, is so affirming. Also because these things can fall through so often we literally don't believe our song will be used until we're actually watching the show and we hear our voices and then it's like AAAAHHHHH NO WAY!

You’ve had some great comments from major publications;

‘Haunting and heartfelt’ - The Times

‘sweetly melancholic songs’ - The Guardian

‘Spellbinding, intricate harmonies...echoing cinematic grandeur’ - The Line of Best Fit

how would YOU sum up your sound?

Our producer once joked that we were a 'choir band' which made us furious because it sounds so lame haha. Cinematic-indie-folk-pop? What a mouthful.

If you could create your very own festival, who would you have as the 3 headline acts?

Jesus that's hard.

Friday - Alex Cameron because we discovered him in LA a couple years ago and fell in love.

Saturday - Robyn because we love her and she is the queen.

Sunday - Self Esteem because Tallulah saw her the other day and was blown away by her sass.

When can we expect an album from you?

When we can all get in the studio long enough to write one!

I can see past shows on Facebook but nothing lined up in the future, can we expect any live dates from you this side of Christmas?

Nope. We realised back in our metal-sandwich days that our best gigs are ones where we can hire out a venue with great acoustics and run the whole thing ourselves, but for now we're focusing on writing.

Finally, there are MILLIONS of bands and acts out there, please name three that we should be checking out right now

Ok we're gonna namecheck some of our mates to spread the love: Freddie Dickson, Dream Nails and Lazy H.

We’d like to thank the ladies for taking the time to chat to us and we wish them every success in the future. Their new single ‘Super Blue Moon’ lands on November 15th and I can honestly say that it will blow your socks off! To keep up to date with future live shows and other newsworthy articles, head over to their WEBSITE