Five years ago, a group of friends embarked on a musical journey.
Squeezing in practices between break and lunch times, Loz, Ike, Tom and Rupert formed back in 2012 at St. Bede’s School.
Spending the last years honing the How’s Harry sound, the band have locked their self-confessed ‘dark pop’ genre in place, proving they have created a winning formula with their recent single release ‘Othello’.
With their genre defined as they work towards an EP release, we caught up with the band before they head out on tour with Pleasure House.
Can you tell us about the formation of How’s Harry?
We all met at St. Bede’s school in 2012. The formation of the band was sort of a happy accident – Loz and Ike had a little acoustic and drum duo and Tom and I sort of walked into the group by mistake. We spent hundreds of break times and lunch times in the music block jamming and trying to work out what kind of band we wanted to be. I guess we’re still figuring that out, but I’d like to think we’ve got our own sound now.
Which bands/artists do you take influence from?
We all have a range of different music tastes and I think that is what makes our music really work to be honest, but the bands that brought us together, in the beginning, were probably Little Comets and Red Hot Chilli Peppers. We were lucky enough to see and meet Little Comets a couple of years ago and that was pretty special for us.
Are there any particular UK bands who are inspiring you at the moment?
We love MassMatiks, we’ve known those guys for a while now and played a few shows together, we also use the same sound guy as them (Jamie). Bands like Don Broco, Foals, Little Comets, Kasabian, if we hear that any of those guys have something new out, we all usually get excited!
You recently released your new single ‘Othello’, what is the story behind the single?
‘Othello’ is actually a really old song in our catalogue, we must have written it when we were 15. It’s a song we’ve recorded maybe 3/4 times in the past, but never been happy with it. We left it for a while and worked on loads of other stuff, until we could comfortably feel like we had ‘a sound’. When it came to us realising something to kick off 2017 we were looking for something with a great hook, so we dug up ‘Othello’ and sort of started it again from scratch and we’re really happy with it. Tom (our Bassist) recorded and mixed the whole thing and he did an amazing job!
Do you have any plans to release an EP this year?
We’ve got enough demos for a couple of EPs at the moment so right now we’re just trying to decide which songs would work with each other the best. It’s a really nice position to be in, but we’re planning to release another single in May, before we decide on an EP release date just yet.
Next month you’re touring alongside Pleasure House, what can we expect from your live sets?
With the Pleasure House shows, people should expect a heavy-set with no messing about really. As we’re playing outside of London and Brighton for the first time really and we know the crowds will probably never have heard us before – we want the set to hit them right in the nuts so they won’t forgot us.
You’re also heading to Byline Festival this summer, if you could join the line-up of any festival in the UK which would this be?
If we could be on the line-up for any festival, it would probably be Reading.It was our first festival we ever went to really, so that would be really special!
What are your aims as a band for 2017?
Our aims for this year are to build a bigger fan base, which will hopefully come with the Pleasure House shows. We’re also looking to book another longer tour towards the end of this year. We just want to get as many people as possible listening to our music and coming to our shows, the shows are getting bigger and the set is sounding huge – so we’re all really excited about the rest of the year!