We had a chat with Manchester’s own Rosellas ahead of their biggest headline show to date at Manchester’s Academy 2 on Saturday 30th of November. Don’t miss out, grab your tickets below!
Hey Rosellas. Thanks for chatting with us! How has your 2024 been so far?
No worries! 2024 has been a good year. We started the year off playing at the Music Feeds event at Manchester Apollo alongside some great bands and then we released our single Is It Any Wonder? in February.
We then toured in March across the country, and played a few festivals over the summer such as Truck. We were then back in the studio in September recording some new material. While we haven’t done as many gigs this year as we would have liked, we’ve definitely been busier than ever behind the scenes.
Where did you all meet and how did Rosellas come to be?
Drew and Ollie played in bands together when they were at school, so they go way back. I met Drew on a train coming back from a Blossoms gig, got chatting about music and spoke about how cool it would be to do what they were doing. Once the seed was planted, Luis was recruited as a friend of Drew’s, and Mark joined a bit later to complete the line up.
We hit the ground running really as it felt like we started gigging almost immediately with very little rehearsals done, learning our craft live rather than in a rehearsal room. Probably a strange way to do it, but it worked for us.
You released your single ‘Is It Any Wonder?’ earlier this year, what was the inspiration behind the track?
The opening chords for the song I had for a while, and we used to jam it out in rehearsal. It started as a long Verve-esque instrumental that was really psychedelic, so one night back at Drew’s we got a melody together and scribbled some words down to fit and the next rehearsal we played it in pretty much the version you hear today.
The lyrics are nice and vague, they’re about something quite specific to me but I like to try and leave them open to interpretation. There’s some quite evocative lines in it so hopefully people who listen to attach their own meaning. Makes me sound very pretentious but it’s the truth.
Rosellas have toured extensively, playing to sold-out gigs across the UK and becoming a mainstay on prestigious tastemaker festivals like Neighbourhood. To anyone who hasn’t yet got the chance to see you live, how would you describe the atmosphere at a Rosellas gig?
Yeah exactly. We’ve gigged a lot. We really feel polished as a live act, as we’ve gigged everywhere and anywhere we can since we started. It’s helped grow the band organically, as the crowds have grown bigger and bigger in each city as people in the crowd bring their mates next time etc.
The atmosphere’s always good. Especially in Manchester. There’s some heavy tunes in our set that get people moving, but you’ll always end up leaving the gigs with your arm round your mates after a singalong.
Your biggest ever headline gig is soon approaching … how are you feeling about this upcoming show, and what may fans expect to hear from your set?
We can’t wait! Hometown gigs are always really special. We don’t gig in Manchester very often anymore, which is strange considering we used to gig here 2/3 times a week wherever would take us. We learned our craft in the pubs and it’s a real honour to now be headlining Manchester Academy 2. We feel we’ve come a long way but earned the right to be here.
We’ve always tried to do something different with the Manchester headlines, we’ve had guests join us on stage playing either slide guitar, harmonica, violin, whatever really. It keeps it interesting for us, and for this gig we’ve got something very special planned. We’re playing a couple of unreleased songs as well, so keep an eye out for them appearing in the future.
If someone hasn’t listened to your music before, what track would you point them towards?
Either Born Under A Cloud or The Same Curse. I think between them they capture everything that we’re about. They’re both mainstays in the set as well.
For a band with no label or anything we’ve released a lot of music, some of it quite different, so I’m sure there’ll be something for everyone.
Thanks Rosellas! Have you got anything else coming up that we should keep an eye out for?
I’ve mentioned we spent some time in the recording studio recently recording 5 songs which will hopefully make up our next release. We want that out Spring time next year, so there’s that and hopefully another UK headline tour to go with it.