What is the story behind your band name? It just fits, no real story behind it unfortunately. It just fits the music well, and that is enough for us.

What are your music backgrounds? We all played lots of instruments from an early age, Charles (the bassist) and myself (Jack, the drummer) went to music school together on the weekend when we were about 12 years old. Eventually we all stumbled across the instruments we play in White Lies at about the same time, when we around 15 years old, and decided to form a band so we could learn to play together rather than keep having lessons.

Who are your influences? As a band we don’t share many influences, we all like fairly different things. I’d say Talking Heads were the first band to encourage us into songwriting together, and the Secret Machines first album inspired us when we started learning to record music, but really they’re just 2 examples from a massive pool of influence.

What image do you think your music conveys? I think our music is very cinematic, and I think different songs stir up different emotions and images. A lot of the songs are narratives and stories so I think escapism is important in our music – very much in the same as it is in a lot of cinema. I guess themes of love and loss are covered fairly comprehensively in our songs, and I think people can relate that to their own personal experiences, so hopefully people take away different feelings from the music.

How would you define the term “success”? Success is really subjective. I think success for White Lies is more about reaching personal goals and targets than numerical ones. Our first real aim as a band was to get to make a debut album that we were all really proud of, and we were definitely successful with that aim.

What are your thoughts of downloading music online? I think that people should really pay for the music they own. You can buy a brand new album through iTunes for £7, compared to about £13 a few years ago, and I think if people don’t pay for the music they own it becomes completely throw away and valueless. Legal downloading of music one of the most cost effective and simple ways to buy music, so I think it should be embraced. I think that bloggers who post entire albums for free download are in the wrong. Posting one track for free in blogs is acceptable, as it can definitely help spread the music in a more controlled and positive way, but in general, illegal online downloading is not a positive thing for the music industry and artists.

What is the biggest obstacle that you’ve come across? Recording our debut album in such a short space of time, and having to write part of it in the studio was a massive task, and it’s definitely the thing I’m most proud of achieving. In more literal terms, crossing the Russian boarder recently from Norway was a pretty big obstacle! Scary boarder.

What is the best and worst thing about playing clubs? The best thing about playing club shows is that the audience is usually ready to move. They want to dance and have a good time. The down side is that sometimes the audience don’t really care what they’re dancing to, they’re too wasted already. Also playing at 2am is a drag.

What genre do you consider yourself? It’s a new genre called ‘cathedral pop’. Or maybe ‘widescreen rock’. Your own choice really.

Which songs do you perform most frequently? We’ve never played a show where we didn’t play Unfinished Business and Death. They’re the first 2 White Lies songs we wrote.

[White Lies To Lose My Life]
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