Winners of the Scottish Alternative Music Award for Best Live Act in 2023, we couldn’t wait to see Glaswegian trance-punk band VLURE at this year’s Y Not Festival. We caught up with them ahead of their set to find out more…
Can you start by introducing the band and telling us about your music background?
Conor: Me and Niall are brothers so I guess it came from that, we have played in different bands and we did this to start something for ourselves. A few years ago we met Alex and Hamish at a gig and decided to start a band together.
Niall: We have been together now for six years and played our first festival five years ago at Truck Festival. We actually played there again last weekend. We released our first song three years ago.
How did your music style develop, can we get away with calling it trance-punk?
Conor: We were into punk at that time, during COVID we decided to create something for ourselves. We were also into dance music so decided to try to combine both of those.
N: Myself and Carlo were into the production side of things and we think that has helped our music develop.
Shattered Faith is by far your biggest song, it also gets a good reaction at the live shows. Is this the song that does it for you?
Conor: It’s actually one of the slower songs in the set, but still enjoyable to play.
Carlo: A couple of the newer tracks have been getting a positive reaction as well, so that really helps us to get crowd recognition. We have been in the studio recently and we tried them out at Glastonbury.
VLURE seem to have taken off in countries such as Germany, Switzerland and France, why do you think that is?
N: We were invited over to play at some showcase festivals in those countries which we really enjoyed, and we think that would be the main reason for our growing popularity over there.
Is there any new music in the pipeline this year?
We shouldn’t really say but there will be an album at some point in the near future. As soon as it’s ready you will be the first to know!
You have played Glastonbury two years in a row, how did you enjoy those experiences?
Conor: We played four shows last year on smaller stages, but this year it was just the one show on a bigger stage and it has been really inspiring for us as a band.
N: It was amazing to play to so many people this year. It’s one of those moments where we think back to watching Glastonbury on TV and saying we would love to play there one day.
Carlo: Some of our fans made some banners for the Glastonbury performance which we were delighted to see.
Are we going to hear any of the new songs in the set tonight?
Conor: We do a couple with rapper Psweatpants and one of them is a newer track. Getting back to your earlier question, he is also the crowd conductor during Shattered Faith.
We find that people from Glasgow are always a hard crowd to win over for up and coming bands, why do you think that is?
N: Glasgow is a no bullshit city and the people can be very self-deprecating and very harsh, but once you are established they take to you quite easily. This is the case in all walks of life in Glasgow, not just in music.
Carlo: We supported Bob Vylan recently at The Garage in Glasgow. The first half of the set people were wondering who we were, but by the end of our set they were saying that’s quite good actually. It was an amazing experience supporting Vylan.
Have you had any support from any fellow Glasgow bands?
Conor: There is such a concentrated network of people creating art in Glasgow, we share a studio space with bands from around the area.
Carlo: We are lucky enough to know so many people working in music, be that DJ’s, producers etc. and we take inspiration from each other.
Thanks for the interview guys, see you in the tent at 6pm for a bounce!
Interview by: Alan Brown
