INTERVIEW – MILESTONES

Milestones are one of the UK’s hottest upcoming bands at the moment and they are on the verge of releasing their debut early next year. We had the chance to chat to Milestones about their new music, strange American experiences and Wagner!

So first of all, can you introduce yourself and what you do in Milestones?

Drew: I’m Drew and I play guitar

Mark: I’m Mark and I play Bass

Matt: I’m Matt and I sing

Eden: I’m Eden and I play guitar

 

You’re currently on ‘The Homecoming Tour’ with The Gospel Youth, how is it going so far?

Mark: It’s been great. yeah all the shows have been busy, its been great it’s been really like, not like shocking but nice to come and play some smaller shows in the UK and see so many kids coming and having a good time.

Eden: Its nice to see how far you’ve come. When you’re loads of supports, you don’t really get to see how many fans you’ve gained cause its always the bigger crowd for the other bands

Matt: A lot of people don’t wanna come to a show unless it’s your headliner as well. like its only really die hard fans that come to every single show whereas we don’t really see the people who like out band generally.

Drew: It’s just seeing people, like we’ve had people fly out from like Germany and Switzerland to see us at different shows so it’s just been like amazing.

You’ve mentioned previously that this is going to be the end of Equal Measures. Will you be recording new music soon?

Matt: We’ve already recorded!

Drew: We spend January recording our album so like this is kinda the last tour we will play ‘Equal Measures’ in full as like the next time we play shows, we’ll most likely be playing new material.

Mark: Yeah the last time you’ll hear equal measures in full.

Eden: We’ll still play the singles for a while.

Mark: yeah, in respect of like playing the whole thing through, this will probably be the last time we get to do that with the album coming out.

Can you give us some more information about this new music?

Matt: It’s gonna be an album that will come out early next year. Can’t say what month yet but its definitely gonna be around early spring or late winter kind of time but yeah it’s gonna be a full-length, we’ve recorded it and already got everything set up for it, its just picking the right moment to make sure that we can get the right tours and make sure that it gets properly pushed. Obviously with the Christmas period, most people are preoccupied with turkeys and stuff and not music so we wanna make sure we get it at the right time.

Equal Measures has been out for just over a year, do you guys still feel the same about the EP since it came out? Are you still as proud of it?

Matt: No, I feel like once you record new music, like we’ve grown so much as songwriters like I think the past two years we’ve grown more as songwriters than we ever have in our entire lives. Like obviously you go through a progression of just earning how to write songs but I feel like the past two years its been a difference between the potential and the actual ability to write the songs. I think with the EP, there was a couple of good and well written songs but the majority of it was just potential people were seeing and I feel like the album is that potential kind of blossoming into what is now our music.

Drew: It just kind of feels like we still like seeing other peoples reactions and seeing people sing along to them but its obviously been out for a year and this new album we’ve got is tenfolds better musically and just everything else so I’m like just kind of ready to go on to that now.

Mark: It does get you really excited to have people listen to your new music because we also know how much better it is, so to have people experience that will be really cool.

Even though there are only five songs on the EP and its been out for a year, is there still a song that each of you holds really close to your heart still?

Drew: My favourite is still ‘Shot In The Dark’ just cause I think it’s definitely the most different on the EP despite you know playing America and Europe and like everywhere else, there was at least one person each night singing our track. It’s always been one I think generally our fans have felt pretty close to and I just think,  its my favourite to perform live just because we perform it so differently to all the other songs.

Mark: My favourite for the longest time has been ‘Hindsight’ like I’ve always enjoyed playing that song live and its always been a lot of fun. I guess with the last Simple Plan tour and on to this tour I’m gonna go with ‘Shot In The Dark’ because I guess with the way its written and the way it allows us to bring more dynamic to the performance, it’s definitely different from the rest of the stuff we’ve done on the EP.

Matt: Yeah I’d agree with what Mark said cause like ‘Shot In The Dark’ is definitely my favourite and means the most to me because I feel like that’s the one that shows the most maturity and the progression in our rising as songwriters so, I feel like that song was the one which kind of was a big reason why we’re doing this kind of tour. It was because people can see that potential being fulfilled.

Eden: Personally my favourite song is ‘Shot In The Dark’ but the one I kind of like the most is ‘Call Me Disaster’ in the sense that it’s what everyone has latched on to. I’ve been able to see that everyone loves that song so we play it at the end of the set and everyone going mental for it whereas a few people have been singing to the other songs, but ‘Call Me Disaster’ always gets the best reception. I don’t really like listen to our record so the only time I listen to it is when I play it live so that’s the kind of experience that I latch on to now.

Is being in a band something that you always wanted to do or was it a hobby that blossomed into something bigger?

Eden: It was always something we kinda wanted to do and that’s the reason why we’re all in this band together because individually we were all in bands before that we were pushing a lot and we were with members that weren’t as motivated so we actively seeked out each other to actually push it and do it for our lives.

From the start of your career through to now, who have been some of your biggest musical inspirations.

Matt: P Diddy

Mark: Alaska Thunderfuck

Drew: Taylor Swift?

Matt: Wagner. His like main income stream is getting people to do birthday wishes for people. No, I’d say the majority is the emo/pop-punk we grew up listening to like Brand New, Mayday Parade and All Time Low. I feel like our music is the perfect blend of those bands because we’re not a straight up pop-punk band and we’re not an emo band by any sorts but we have quite a lot of people coming up to us after listening to ‘Shot In The Dark’ saying it sounds like Brand New and then quite a lot of people coming up to us when they listen to ‘Call Me Disaster’ saying it sounds like You Me At Six so I feel like we took the sort of music we listen to and merged it together.

Drew: That’s definitely something we wanted to achieve in our music. We wanted something that was in some sense individualistic and that people could recognise as us.

Through your entire time being in a band, you probably have some interesting stories! What has been your most embarrassing moment?

Eden: Oh god there was that time in London, it was the first time we played in front of all of our agents for our first ever time and I literally fell onto the stage. I had two guitars in my hand and I went to jump and I hit my foot on the front of it and face planted the stage!

Matt: Mine was probably in I’m gonna say it was in Edinburgh

Mark: Oh yeah! Thank you Aberdeen!

Matt: Oh yeah it was Glasgow, I mixed up Edinburgh and Glasgow. I’m 100% sure it was Edinburgh and yeah I said Glasgow and then I tripped up and sprained my ankle and nobody showed me any sympathy whatsoever they all fucking laughed their heads off!

Mark: There was a date on the Mayday Parade tour, I wanna say New York I’m not 100% sure and the stage was pretty big like there was enough room for us and I somehow managed to knock two of our drummers cymbals over at once in the space of 35 seconds. I realised I knocked them over and was like ‘alright I’ll be more careful of that one’ and a few people laughed on the front row. Did it again. Yeah it was definitely New York I remember Jake looking over at me like he wanted to kill me.

Drew: For me it would probably be on that same tour in San Diego where Matt got a throat infection but the day after we were playing to our label, management, booking agent and press for the first time so I had to sing the set on my own but we’d never rehearsed as a four piece without Matt so that was pretty embarrassing. The crowd took it really well but you could tell all of us found it really awkward to deal with.

Being on the road for so long, you must get quite susceptible to illness. What are some of your best tips for surviving on the road for so long?

Matt: Well this box is my health kit but I get ill really, really quick. I’ve actually got tonsillitis, laryngitis, and fucking pharyngitis as well.

Drew: Sounds a made up one that.

Matt: I’m on antibiotics at the moment but I take incredibly good care of my voice so that whole kit is to make sure I don’t get ill. I’d say for vocalists more than anything, cause if you’re another member it doesn’t really matter if you feel like shit,  for vocalists I’d say hydrate yourself a lot, throat coat tea is amazing, honey, lemon just you need to make sure that your vocal chords are hydrated.

Mark: Alcohol. Loads of drugs.

Drew: To vocalists all the obvious stuff, for everyone else deal with it.

Getting onto a more interesting topic, have you ever come across any hardships being in a band?

Matt: Yeah, having to deal with these fuckers! Every single day these are the hardships!

Eden: I was gonna say spending so much time around people, like I’ve been so close and not having my own personal space but we all get on pretty well so.

Matt: Yeah the most surprising thing about being in this band is honestly the kind of mutual understanding we have of each other and we genuinely really get on with each other. We don’t really have any personality clashes between the four of us, obviously we have our little bickers but nothing anymore than a bicker cause everyone understands there is a bigger picture to it all. So I’d say we don’t ever create hardships for ourselves and whenever we do reach a hardship we’re really good at rallying together and dealing with it. Like I feel like the best thing about this band is that were really good at making decisions and if we’ve got an issue we don’t shy away from it we’re like right this is how we’re gonna do it and then we face it. There were plenty of things, especially in America in a place that we didn’t know, that we’d never been to in our lives and we faced a lot of hardships. We were sleeping on random peoples floors every single day and just little things like we stayed in a drug den one night and we didn’t realise and another night a girl tried to stab us. There’s a lot of things that as a band you’ve gotta deal with that people don’t understand actually happens because we’ve not got the money to make sure we’re safe. I remember there was one hotel room which was just, in the bed there was lots of blood everywhere .

Mark: The toilet, the shower, everywhere. No water going through to the hotel room at all.

Matt: And the car park was a prostitution ring.

Mark: I guess that was one thing that we always knew when each other needs space so like we can really wind each other up as much as possible.

Eden: It was like us last night when we were ripping you [Mark] and we were like ‘Mark turn your alarms off!’

Mark: It gets to the point where you can sort of pick up that someones actually getting annoyed and agitated and its like ‘maybe I’ll leave them alone for ten minutes’

If you were stuck in a lift, who would be the worst person from the band to be stuck with?

Mark: Me because I ask a million and two questions about everything ever.

Drew: I’m trying to think of who’s the most claustrophobic cause that would be a fucking nightmare.

Matt: I wouldn’t want Mark with me, Mark would do my head in.

Mark: I ask so many questions about things I know nobody knows but I ask anyway.

Matt: In that scenario with the way that I am, I’d be like really trying to focus on how to get out.

Mark: To be fair I am pretty handy.

Matt: You are but you’d do my head in! But yeah there isn’t really anybody who I feel would freak out.

Eden: Knowing you, you’d be taking the piss the whole time!

Matt: Maybe you [Eden], I don’t think you’d do anything. I think you’d just stay there and stay quiet.

Eden: No, I’d just be out the way. Just go to sleep!

Mark: He [Eden] can literally fall asleep anywhere in 0.3 of a second.

Eden: Yeah but I’m vegan. That’s why I fall asleep cause I haven’t got the energy

If you could say anything to the fans, people coming out to the shows and reading this, what would you say?

Matt: Thank you for being a part of this journey of an EP with us. Its pretty crazy that we’re able to headline these shows and do what we’re doing right now.Obviously we’re not in any delusion that we’re a big band by any sorts we’re still very much in the upcoming band scene but it means a lot that we can just have five songs released and be able to play a headline slot in front of 100+ kids a night for 10 nights across the UK.

Mark: The support never goes unnoticed, never unappreciated. It means the world to all of us, anyone that comes out to the shows, makes the effort to come early at the front singing, we notice all of you and its really cool.

Matt: yeah we have a very personal relationship with all our fans, we’ve actually got quite a lot of European fans coming out to these shows including tonight and in Manchester there was like 15 people from Germany and stuff so, we have a really personal relationship with them and all our fans just because of how much we appreciate them so keep supporting, keep telling your friends and it will never be something that, we lose ourselves.

Drew:And thank you for showering us with the endless amount of vegan chocolate and all the chocolate, trinkets, little ceramic cloggs, fidget spinners

Matt: Yeah the fidget spinners mean more songs

Drew: Yeah there’s a girl from Eindhoven and she got everyone a little gift bag, she’s honestly the best but there was like loads of chocolate and I think cloggs are like a Dutch thing and there were little ceramic cloggs on like a keyring it was pretty cool. There’s so many people who bring us so much cool stuff.