Australia is currently exporting some of the most promising pop-punk sounds around. More members of this bright contingency, Yours Truly are at Donington to play their first-ever international show – talk about making an entrance. We had a chat with singer Mikaila Delgado and guitarist Lachlan Cronin to get the low down on the upcoming band.
How are you both?
Mikaila: Good thanks! How are you?
All good thank you, how’s your Download so far?
Lachlan: It’s good, we’ve had a little walk around.
Mikaila: We had a three-hour drive here, so we tried to get here as soon as we could. Had a little look around. We’re playing tonight, so we don’t really get to enjoy the full Download experience, so we’re trying to as much as possible while we’re here.
Is this your first time over here in the UK?
Lachlan: This is our first time in the UK and Download.
Mikaila: This is our first ever international set, the first set that we’ve played somewhere outside of Australia.
What’s the touring scene like over in Australia?
Mikaila: Australia is weird because you have four or five major cities that you play in and they’re all eight to twelve hours from each other. It could be even longer! Brisbane to Adelaide is like twenty-four hours?! It’s very spaced out, and usually, you can do four or five shows in five days, or four weekends. It’s very different.
Lachlan: And our manager was telling us that the longest drive he’s had to do is five hours, so we’d be fine with that!
Mikaila: I think there was one that was like a two-hour drive, and for me, that’s how long it takes me to get to and from work in Australia! Not even leaving my city.
Pop-punk seems to be having a bit of a moment in Australia – does it feel like that on the inside?
Lachlan: I definitely think so. A lot of our friends’ bands are doing things similar to us, like getting picked up, going overseas. Our friends in Between You & Me were just here for Slam Dunk; it’s kinda cool!
Mikaila: I feel like we have a close community. It’s a big country, but in terms of people and bands, not so big, so you know what everyone’s doing, and everyone’s supportive of each other because there’s not many of us, so we want to see everyone succeed. There’s barely any competitiveness, and that allowed bands to thrive.
Is it after ‘High Hopes’ all this traction started happening?
Lachlan: Yeah, It’s crazy, just a dream come true for all of us to be playing music outside of Australia.
Mikaila: It’s one of those things that we’ve spoken about since we started the band and being ‘imagine if we get to play overseas?!’ And I think when we landed, we all looked at each other and were like ‘oh shit! We’re in a different country now; we actually get to play Download!’ It’s crazy.
How did the success of it feel?
Lachlan: It was unbelievable. None of us thought it would go how it did.
Mikaila: It was unexpected. We have this joke that everything we do is very last minute. We put the song up on Dreambound like a week before it was even supposed to come out, so it was kind of just, well, we’ll just chuck it up online and see if people like it, maybe we can get some shows… and within ten days it had one-hundred-thousand views!
How has that changed your perspective on Yours Truly?
Mikaila: I guess it’s the sense of how powerful social media is and it’s important to make sure you’re releasing music. That’s what opened my eyes, that if you just put stuff out there, someone might hear it. It’s about taking a chance, you’ve just got to be there, and be open to opportunity.
Have you noticed people from far away listening to your stuff?
Lachlan: Yeah, by going on Dreambound it opens us up to that Austrian market and Europeans.
Mikaila: And even the fact that we get to play shows here. We’re doing two headline shows; we’ve sold tickets to those shows, people want to actually see us in a different country which is very unreal. It’s one of those things, you just don’t think is going to happen, and it has to a certain extent.
What about the future?
Lachlan: After Download, and this UK run, we’ll go back home. We’ve got our own headline tour in August around Australia, and straight after that in September we go to the US with Sense Fail. It’s just tour, tour, tour!
Taken from the August issue of Upset, out now.
