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Interview
Marcia
from the skints
Tickets
Interviewer - david Weddle
London four-piece, The Skints, have clawed their way up from the depths of the underground punk/ska scene to a
unique fixture on the global reggae stage. Drawing influences as wide as soul, pop, grime and hardcore, their original
brand of “tropical punk” has seen them evolve in to one of the hardest working and most respected bands in UK music.
Formed while at school in 2007, The Skints hail from the Waltham Forest and Redbridge boroughs of North East London,
and they cut their teeth in London’s underground punk scene before venturing out of the M25 to play their first self-
booked DIY venture and embark on a heaving touring regime across the nation’s “toilet venue” circuit.
The band are coheadlining a 7 date UK tour with Gentleman's Dub Club. We caught up with Marcia ahead of the tour.
unique fixture on the global reggae stage. Drawing influences as wide as soul, pop, grime and hardcore, their original
brand of “tropical punk” has seen them evolve in to one of the hardest working and most respected bands in UK music.
Formed while at school in 2007, The Skints hail from the Waltham Forest and Redbridge boroughs of North East London,
and they cut their teeth in London’s underground punk scene before venturing out of the M25 to play their first self-
booked DIY venture and embark on a heaving touring regime across the nation’s “toilet venue” circuit.
The band are coheadlining a 7 date UK tour with Gentleman's Dub Club. We caught up with Marcia ahead of the tour.
The Skints are headlining out on a UK Co-Headlining tour this Saturday with Gentleman’s Dub Club. How did that come about?
We’ve been friends with those guys for a long time actually and something like this has been on the cards for ages. Like we’ve been wanting to do something and this is just kind of perfect you know?. We wanted to start the year off with something fun and meant we can do those great venues too, but also it just makes a really great night, I think, we both bands want to do headline long sets and it just worked out really well.
We’ve been doing a lot of work together as well through Covid and it just kind of felt like an organic thing to come about.
You are playing some great venues, Nottingham Rock City for example and two nights in Bristol I’ve just checked and Bristol is sold out.
Yeah both sold out, I’m really excited about that. We headlined The Marble Factory a year ago and it was fantastic and that night sold, and it’s really great to come back and play the same venue again, twice and its sold out.
Speaking of venues, you’ve played pretty consistently live over recording so in terms of the venues you’ve played in around the world from tiny little pubs and clubs to huge festivals. What do you prefer, do you prefer the smaller venues or are you happy wherever you play?
To me there's something in both. Personally I like playing on the big stage because, you know, I like the sound to be good, I’m a bit of an audiophile so for sound I like playing the bigger venues and I like playing to a bigger crowd. I feel a bit more secure and confident in those situations, if the crowd is small you feel a bit more on the spot. But when we do those big stages for two months you really start to miss the small shows.
Something I love about our band is we’ve managed to do a good mix of both over our whole career. Just the beginning of last year actually as we were coming out of Covid we were supposed to do some of those limited ticket shows. It kept getting pushed back and back over the two years of the pandemic and it grew so disappointing because we kept having to tell people that we couldn’t play those shows because the rules kept changing. Until eventually we just decided to turn it into a proper show and sell a few more tickets but we still did small venues. We did the Cavern in Exeter which is somewhere we haven’t played in over a decade, I think. The stage didn’t physically fit all my stuff, instruments. I feel like those are the shows that the audience remember, when they look back on seeing a band they remember those more that when they see you at a bigger venue.
We’ve been friends with those guys for a long time actually and something like this has been on the cards for ages. Like we’ve been wanting to do something and this is just kind of perfect you know?. We wanted to start the year off with something fun and meant we can do those great venues too, but also it just makes a really great night, I think, we both bands want to do headline long sets and it just worked out really well.
We’ve been doing a lot of work together as well through Covid and it just kind of felt like an organic thing to come about.
You are playing some great venues, Nottingham Rock City for example and two nights in Bristol I’ve just checked and Bristol is sold out.
Yeah both sold out, I’m really excited about that. We headlined The Marble Factory a year ago and it was fantastic and that night sold, and it’s really great to come back and play the same venue again, twice and its sold out.
Speaking of venues, you’ve played pretty consistently live over recording so in terms of the venues you’ve played in around the world from tiny little pubs and clubs to huge festivals. What do you prefer, do you prefer the smaller venues or are you happy wherever you play?
To me there's something in both. Personally I like playing on the big stage because, you know, I like the sound to be good, I’m a bit of an audiophile so for sound I like playing the bigger venues and I like playing to a bigger crowd. I feel a bit more secure and confident in those situations, if the crowd is small you feel a bit more on the spot. But when we do those big stages for two months you really start to miss the small shows.
Something I love about our band is we’ve managed to do a good mix of both over our whole career. Just the beginning of last year actually as we were coming out of Covid we were supposed to do some of those limited ticket shows. It kept getting pushed back and back over the two years of the pandemic and it grew so disappointing because we kept having to tell people that we couldn’t play those shows because the rules kept changing. Until eventually we just decided to turn it into a proper show and sell a few more tickets but we still did small venues. We did the Cavern in Exeter which is somewhere we haven’t played in over a decade, I think. The stage didn’t physically fit all my stuff, instruments. I feel like those are the shows that the audience remember, when they look back on seeing a band they remember those more that when they see you at a bigger venue.
So in terms of albums, the last album was 2019 - Swimming Lessons, great album. Is there anything new coming out in the near future or are fans going to have to wait a bit longer for another album?
Well, we are actually currently getting back in the studio now. We don’t currently have a theme for an album right now, we set out to create with less restrictions, you know? And just and be writing as much as possible. We’ve already been in the studio this year, doing some fun stuff, we’ve been working Toby from Gentleman’s Dub Club. So we’re definitely back in there. Back in the creating game. It was a bit of a slow start because of the pandemic, because we had to dive right back in to touring after all of that had ended and did the best we could last year but I would definitely say writing is at the forefront of what we are planning this year.
In terms of your releases, your signed but not signed to a label at the moment. Is it by album that you do it?
Yeah, the way we’ve always done it, and I’m really proud of this to be honest. What we tend to do is we lease our albums to record labels so we always keep control of everything and we own everything we have ever made. I that one of the really big reasons that we’ve kind of managed this far to keep going. I think a lot of musicians find themselves a few years in to their career in huge debt or they suddenly realise that they have no control or they can’t make the final decisions over things that should belong to them. And I know that I’m really privileged to have the people in the band that I do because you know, being able to work together and have each other’s backs, and it’s the same line-up that its always been.
The reason I brought that up is because, I don’t know if you’ve heard, a radio DJ said recently about unsigned bands that he didn’t like them. He was very negative about unsigned bands but in terms of your experience, I know you’re unsigned 90% of the time until you release an album and then you lease that out but you’ve had a positive experience by the sounds of it from being unsigned?
Its interesting because I wonder if he knows the reality of what it means to sign a record deal. For us we make the album and obviously we need someone to distribute it and print it and press it and stuff like that, you do need a label for that at the end of the day unless you are going to start your own one. We’re not against major labels or anything like that, just for us personally, you know we have had offers but we’ve just always wanted to keep control of everything. It makes everything take a little bit longer but if your in it for the long haul.
Like you say, you’ve had the original line-up from the start. Since you were in school you grew up together, was it you and Josh who went to primary school together?
Yeah me and Josh met when we were 5 years old and grew up together and met the other two in year 7 or 8. We are more of a family at this point.
Josh mentioned his influences included GreenDay while he was skateboarding, he more into punk. What were you listening to when you growing up?
I was a bit different from the rest of the gang. When they met me I was really deep in to my music studies. And I was studying classical, flute and piano and I had every intention of pursuing that. I didn’t learn to sing for example, or, you know, playing guitar. I didn’t do any of the things I do now. For me I just wanted to go to university, maybe be in an orchestra one day, you know. I at that point wasn’t interested in pop music, I was pretty much just wrapped up in my classical music and then I started discovering some older rock. I discovered Nirvana, Queen they weren’t the current ones I discovered old brilliant albums. I wasn’t into Ska or Reggae or anything like that just yet, that was when I started to get in to more alternative stuff.
Then Josh told me one day that he wanted to start a Ska band and he had heard on the grapevine that I had a saxophone in the house. And there was, there was a saxophone in my house, it belonged to my Dad, I didn’t play it. So I worked out how to play it for him. It was fairly similar to the flute, I just got my fingers around it and worked it out, then through that and wanting to learn how to make Ska music that’s how I discovered that kind of music. Josh and Jamie in the band they had their own sort of personal connections with that kind of music and they showed me loads of stuff. They know all the history and all of that stuff and with me I was just kind of a classical nerd. It really was this odd mix of punk and punk rock and then suddenly ska and reggae so we’ve always had that mix of the two.
Is there any words of wisdom that you want to give to your fans or people wanting to go in to the music industry?
We always try and say is not to stop playing. What we always did was, we never said no to a show, we always, always played no matter what it was. There was a time when perhaps we overplayed, we did a lot of shows. But I personally think that one of my greatest strengths in terms of what I do now is experience. We’ve done a lot for our ages and it’s because we started so early and immediately got on the road. We didn’t stop, we kind of had blinkers on with this. I just think that not wanting it to just happen really fast, we’ve kind of never really worried about that. We’re all great friends so we wouldn’t notice the time passing. Definitely be nice to each other if you are in a band.
Well, we are actually currently getting back in the studio now. We don’t currently have a theme for an album right now, we set out to create with less restrictions, you know? And just and be writing as much as possible. We’ve already been in the studio this year, doing some fun stuff, we’ve been working Toby from Gentleman’s Dub Club. So we’re definitely back in there. Back in the creating game. It was a bit of a slow start because of the pandemic, because we had to dive right back in to touring after all of that had ended and did the best we could last year but I would definitely say writing is at the forefront of what we are planning this year.
In terms of your releases, your signed but not signed to a label at the moment. Is it by album that you do it?
Yeah, the way we’ve always done it, and I’m really proud of this to be honest. What we tend to do is we lease our albums to record labels so we always keep control of everything and we own everything we have ever made. I that one of the really big reasons that we’ve kind of managed this far to keep going. I think a lot of musicians find themselves a few years in to their career in huge debt or they suddenly realise that they have no control or they can’t make the final decisions over things that should belong to them. And I know that I’m really privileged to have the people in the band that I do because you know, being able to work together and have each other’s backs, and it’s the same line-up that its always been.
The reason I brought that up is because, I don’t know if you’ve heard, a radio DJ said recently about unsigned bands that he didn’t like them. He was very negative about unsigned bands but in terms of your experience, I know you’re unsigned 90% of the time until you release an album and then you lease that out but you’ve had a positive experience by the sounds of it from being unsigned?
Its interesting because I wonder if he knows the reality of what it means to sign a record deal. For us we make the album and obviously we need someone to distribute it and print it and press it and stuff like that, you do need a label for that at the end of the day unless you are going to start your own one. We’re not against major labels or anything like that, just for us personally, you know we have had offers but we’ve just always wanted to keep control of everything. It makes everything take a little bit longer but if your in it for the long haul.
Like you say, you’ve had the original line-up from the start. Since you were in school you grew up together, was it you and Josh who went to primary school together?
Yeah me and Josh met when we were 5 years old and grew up together and met the other two in year 7 or 8. We are more of a family at this point.
Josh mentioned his influences included GreenDay while he was skateboarding, he more into punk. What were you listening to when you growing up?
I was a bit different from the rest of the gang. When they met me I was really deep in to my music studies. And I was studying classical, flute and piano and I had every intention of pursuing that. I didn’t learn to sing for example, or, you know, playing guitar. I didn’t do any of the things I do now. For me I just wanted to go to university, maybe be in an orchestra one day, you know. I at that point wasn’t interested in pop music, I was pretty much just wrapped up in my classical music and then I started discovering some older rock. I discovered Nirvana, Queen they weren’t the current ones I discovered old brilliant albums. I wasn’t into Ska or Reggae or anything like that just yet, that was when I started to get in to more alternative stuff.
Then Josh told me one day that he wanted to start a Ska band and he had heard on the grapevine that I had a saxophone in the house. And there was, there was a saxophone in my house, it belonged to my Dad, I didn’t play it. So I worked out how to play it for him. It was fairly similar to the flute, I just got my fingers around it and worked it out, then through that and wanting to learn how to make Ska music that’s how I discovered that kind of music. Josh and Jamie in the band they had their own sort of personal connections with that kind of music and they showed me loads of stuff. They know all the history and all of that stuff and with me I was just kind of a classical nerd. It really was this odd mix of punk and punk rock and then suddenly ska and reggae so we’ve always had that mix of the two.
Is there any words of wisdom that you want to give to your fans or people wanting to go in to the music industry?
We always try and say is not to stop playing. What we always did was, we never said no to a show, we always, always played no matter what it was. There was a time when perhaps we overplayed, we did a lot of shows. But I personally think that one of my greatest strengths in terms of what I do now is experience. We’ve done a lot for our ages and it’s because we started so early and immediately got on the road. We didn’t stop, we kind of had blinkers on with this. I just think that not wanting it to just happen really fast, we’ve kind of never really worried about that. We’re all great friends so we wouldn’t notice the time passing. Definitely be nice to each other if you are in a band.
