When Amyl & The Sniffers formed in the Melbourne suburb of Balaclava in 2016, they had no vision of global success. Early songs like ‘Stole My Push Bike’ and ‘Balaclava Lover Boogie’ were never conceived as songs that would be one day played in Hollywood.
Amyl & The Sniffers have returned home to Melbourne ahead of their next tour with The Smashing Pumpkins and Jane’s Addiction across Australia. Their last show in the ‘Comfort To Me’ tour was on 7 February in Hollywood, California.
“You don’t even think about that stuff. When we chucked it online we were happy to have five Bandcamp streams. Its pretty cool,” Amy Taylor tells Noise11 about what was in her head at the start of the band’s career.
Name-checking Balaclava she says also went mostly unnoticed to the Americans. “I think they think Balaclava is the thing you were on your head. It’s just about the suburb. They don’t know what Amyl is. They think it is like a Swedish name like Amelle”.
Watch the Noise11 interview with Amy and Dec from Amyl & The Sniffers.
Amyl & The Sniffers happened out of Melbourne in 2016 because of Melbourne’s healthy live music scene. Melbourne rivals Austin Texas as the city with the most music venues in the world. Dec Martens says, “We were lucky that in Melbourne you can book multiple nights a week and people won’t get sick of you. You get to play in front of all sorts of different people, all different events. You get to play free events. You get to play big shows as well. If you are a young band and get enough interest to book yourself for some consecutive weeks you almost get that experience you get on the road even though you are still in Melbourne. It’s a good place for starting out as a band. When we started, Sydney still had its lockout laws. I don’t know what the scene is like in Brisbane. They have three venues don’t they? We are very Melbourne band, I guess”.
The Smashing Pumpkins, Jane’s Addiction, Amyl & The Sniffers, Redhook and Battlesnake will perform on The World Is A Vampire tour across Australia starting 15 April in Brisbane. Get dates, venues, tickets here.
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