“I don’t think we’ve ever really fit in. I don’t know if we will now, but this is us unmasking ourselves.”
WSTR frontman Sammy Clifford is very well aware of what some have been saying about him and his band.
Don’t get him wrong; he’s thankful for it. The drive of being an upcoming band in one of the most jarring and cut-throat genres for comparison, pop-punk, has meant that WSTR have broken from the leashes of their stumbling history. One which saw them self-release an EP (2015’s ‘SKRWD’), get signed to a label before ever playing a live show, and then put out a full-length album – all in such quick succession that there was never really any time for them to figure out just who they were.
“I didn’t think this way before, but I’d rather be a band someone hates, or someone’s favourite, rather than one where people think, ‘Oh, they’re alright’,” Sammy carefully admits. That’s not to say flack they received from certain quarters wasn’t painful, especially when they were first starting out.
“When we first wrote music, we were excited to put it out, and we didn’t have any expectations or any pressures. But when everyone started slagging it off we were a bit upset, and we were a bit like ‘Oh…’, and then-” He pauses. “It was a weird one because it seemed to work?”
