Luna Blue have been smashing it all year, with previous releases Look At Me and Away With You both causing a stir – the latter featuring as BBC Radio Sussex and BBC Radio Surrey’s Drivetime Track of the Day. The band won Unxigned blog’s Artist of the Month in June, and have performed at half a dozen lockdown festivals so far since March, appearing most recently at Felt Cute Festival’s Underscore 3 stage with a stonking virtual set, and sharing a line up with Lauren Hibberd, Red Rum Club and APRE.
Who Are Luna Blue?
Luna Blue are a 4-piece alt indie band from Brighton, UK. We are Tom High (vocals), Ryan Wellman (lead guitar), Seb Bowen (drums) and Nick Davie (bass guitar).
How did you get together?
We all met at Chichester university where we were studying Music. It started off as a bit of fun, 4 mates jamming together … we all really liked how it sounded, and decided to get a bit more serious and start playing gigs. 5 years later here we are!
What does the Band name mean?
Unfortunately, we don’t have a cool, deep meaning behind the name! It came to our previous guitarist from college, in a dream. We all thought Luna Blue sounded great, so we kept it!
What is your writing process like?
We usually have some initial idea – this could be a chord sequence, or riff. From there we get together and start trying out lots of different ideas. We usually rewrite the same song about 5/6 times before we come out with the final result. Something we have found useful is a large Spotify playlist, full of songs we think describes the direction and feel of the song we’re writing – each of us has very different musical influences.
Your last single out* was Away With You, how did you come up with the track?
This one was very stressful! We had been working on the track for months and just could not get it to work: a few days before we were booked into the studio, we finally finished it – it ended up sounding almost like a classic disco song!
*Dan – our new track Dance With Your Heart is out today – Tori
What has been the best venue you have played at so far?
This is always a difficult one to answer… the Hope & Ruin/Sticky Mikes Frog Bar (RIP!) and Green Door Store are all fantastic in Brighton. Outside of that, the Notting Hill Arts Club in London was a fantastic night, and a venue which has hosted some big names!
How would you change the music Industry?
I think artists should get paid more from Spotify streams for sure. I also think unsigned bands should, as a standard, get some kind of payment for gigs … even if it’s just £10 to cover petrol!
What Independent bands are you listening to?
Really digging Sarpa Salpa at the moment!
What has lockdown been like for you?
Lockdown hasn’t been too bad. Been really missing the atmosphere of live gigs and meeting fans. Also, just being together as a group of mates! However, we’ve been doing a lot of online festivals and interviews with various different people which has been great. We also recently finished a session in the studio for more new music in 2021. Amazingly, we even managed to release 2 tracks already this year (Look At Me and Away With You) and of course we have new track Dance With Your Heart out today, 21 August.
What’s Next for Luna Blue?
We have lots of new music, music videos and other things coming out soon. We also have a ton of really exciting gigs to announce for 2021, including a southern UK tour anchored around our headline gig at Brighton Komedia on 26 March, sharing the AmpRocks stage with McFly (which we’re super stoked about) and headlining the Unsigned Marquee at Tribfest in the summer – watch this space!
