From A 'Homeless Band' To Global Force

When Newcastle five-piece Trophy Eyes signed with Hopeless Records in 2014, fresh off the release of their debut EP Everything Goes Away, the group had no idea of what lay ahead of them.

Now with some impressive shows under their belt the group are quickly gaining recognition nationally and overseas.

“It’s really cool opportunity wise,” vocalist John Floreani reveals. “They look after us really well and we’ve become good friends with a lot of the people who work there. Opportunities like the Warped tour and big tours like Anti Flag. I don’t think it’d be possible without our label backing us. It’s been really handy and the label budgets for albums meant we could go to Karma Studios in Thailand to do our last album so that was really fortunate we had a label backing to achieve that.”

“It’s been better each time we go overseas. We’ve been to the UK twice now and Europe, it was really cool the second time 'round there were some really kind words and a lot of people come out to see us. Since we did the Warped tour in America there’s a lot of social media buzz about us coming back.”

Prior to their continuous rise, Trophy Eyes began humbly with minor goals boosted by a common love for music.

“We kind of got together and wrote for about a year and got know each other and took it really slow,” Floreani retells. “We didn’t really have any plans to do anything. I remember we went to a venue called The Loft that has since closed. I was watching this show and I saw everyone playing and the punters getting really into it and I was like ‘wow this is a great venue’ and at our next practice I said ‘we have to play The Loft, that’s my big dream’.  Then we played The Loft and since then have played all around the world.

"We never really expected to be doing this; none of us stopped our careers to do this. We’re all still working. We didn’t plan on this but it’s pretty cool to have that opportunity to go overseas and travel and meet all these people that I didn’t even think was possible. I thought it was reserved for A Day To Remember and Bring Me The Horizon.”

Despite releasing a standalone, heavier track Tired Hearts in late 2015, Floreani insists the group is continuing to write and only showcased the track to share their favourite piece of work with the world.

“The reason Tired Hearts didn’t come out on the album was it was too heavy, and when we were putting the album together with the songs we had we were like ‘this one we’ll give a miss because we don’t want that vibe with this album’. Even though we did take it off the album it’s still probably our favourite song we’ve ever written. When it finally came out it was pretty cool to show everybody our favourite thing we’ve ever written. It's no new direction, we’ve just been touring and chilling out for a while so we thought we’d give everybody something to listen to.”

“I can’t say there’s anything I didn’t like with Mend, Move On. We’re all really proud of that as our first album. I look at a lot of bands that do EP after EP and then finally an album, we were such a young band still we had an EP out and then did an album. We really had no idea what we were doing. If I could change anything it would be the time that we had to write. The stress levels were high and we used to have this place at Cal’s house and once they moved that didn’t allow us to do that so were this homeless band looking for studios to prac in and trying to write at the same time.

"The place we were writing in was this really bad place in Newcastle; it was always raining, there were always junkies and really crazy people around at night. Everyone was working so we always practiced from 6pm to 11pm then go home and come back. If I could change one thing it would be the time we had, otherwise I’m pretty proud of that album.”

“We’ve started writing here and there, bits and pieces and we’re putting it together at the moment. We have some really exciting shit and I’m super stocked for Trophy Eyes. It’s some of the best fun stuff I’ve ever done with Trophy Eyes.”

Originally published in X-Press Magazine