Interview with Pete Devine of Pete’s Rock News and Views (https://petesrocknewsandviews.com)
PD: How would you describe yourself or your band as an artist?
AWS: First thing first, it’s an honour for us to answer your questions. As We Stray is not a real name, it comes from the need to get away from what we don’t like, what hurts us, and what made us musicians. We needed a safe place where we could express ourselves and make everyone like us feel that they are not alone
PD: Can you tell us briefly about your background – i.e. where you’re from, how you came to make music, etc.
AWS: We’re a 4 piece band, 3 of us are from Turin and our singer’s from Milan. The 2 founders (Mark and Dave) met each other the first in the studio years back while Mark was shooting a video, and even though they didn’t like each other at the beginning, they started to know each other better and decided to start writing new music together. Over time we understood that certain types of emotions are often felt by many people, but for some there is no real way to let off steam, even though it may seem like a silly phrase, and this is the main reason why we decided to write songs together.
PD: Who and what inspires you to make music, both in terms of musical and other influences? What do you like to write about in your songs?
AWS: As we said before, We’re writing our emotions directly into lyrics and music, this music genre reflects our feelings perfectly. Many musicians and bands inspired us to start the music process, to give examples we have an eye towards bands like While she sleeps, Bad Omens, Bring me the horizon, Wage War, as far as the musical aspect but also for the whole “band context”, ideas, writing process and the introspective journey that can be guessed by listening to their songs. In a broader view of this situation, what inspires us the most is to become a light in the dark for the people who feel the same things we’re witnessing every day.
There’s no real plan for writing lyrics, Mark and Dave are writing everything, but it all depends on their moods, their feelings when they approach the writing session. We’ve written a lot about betrayals, love. We definitely want to keep on writing music to express our feelings.
PD: What are your aspirations as an artist?
AWS: Surely the main reason and our greatest aspiration as musicians is to impress as many people as possible with our songs, with our lyrics. As mentioned before, each of us has inner demons to be defeated, but many people do not have a real way to fight them and let off steam. The question of mental health is a topic that is very close to our hearts. We have all gone through difficult times in life and music has helped many people. We must give our contribution.
PD: What is the proudest moment in your music career so far?
AWS: Even tho our path is still long, we had the pleasure to share the stage with bands like Meshuggah, Soilwork, Jinjer, Nergal, At The Gates and many more, and probably the proudest moment was right after the show when we went into the pit to hang out with some fans, and all of them and the promoters asked us to come back and play on bigger stages.
PD: Promoting one’s music is such a challenge these days, especially with so many new artists emerging from bedrooms
in the day of the home studio. How is that going?
AWS: Nowadays everything is going fast and the music business likewise. We love to study strategies and the best way to optimize the project in every aspect, everything is going amazingly right now, we had the chance to work with some of the best PR companies to push this song and we’re looking forward to see the results.
PD: And how do you book and promote your live shows and tours? Any performances coming up?
AWS: We decided, a year ago, to sign with Metal Music Bookings and Management, we started working on a plan for the future of this band and they always watched over us daily. We’re working on our new liveset now and we’ll be playing some banger shows in the next months
PD: What do you think about downloading music online? What about streaming sites like Spotify?
AWS: As the music business continues to evolve, as bands and as entrepreneurs ourselves, we have to realize that the physical record is becoming an extra expense, and hardly sold at live shows (except for hardcore fans).
personally we are fans of the physical album, but between cost and profit obviously spotify has the upper hand. Although we are working hard for this to be our primary job, the fundamental concept behind the project remains that of reaching as many people as possible before thinking about mere money
PD: What song do you wish you’d written and why?
AWS: We had a deep conversation before answering this question, because a lot of songs changed our way of seeing and feeling our world.
But we then decide to talk about Dave’s answer, because this describes our view.
If I Were You – Starting Over. because every day we fight against memories and scars that don’t leave us alone and we look for a way to get rid of certain weights
PD: Is there anything you don’t like about the music industry, which you would change if you could?
AWS: We will not dwell too much on this subject. We don’t have the tools to judge the music business at such a high level. The only problem, which is the same in any field, is that money moves more numbers than talent
PD: So, what are you working on at the moment?
AWS: COME N GET IT was just the first step, we’re already working on some more releases. We are in the studio working on a more concrete sound for the band. We are lucky enough to say that we’re surrounded by the best crew we could have asked for. Definitely we’ll be on stage soon and consistently
PD: Where can we learn more about you and buy your music/merch online?
AWS: We are on every social media right now and after this release we’re going to announce our online store, everything’s ready and we have tons of designs and merch, so stick around
As We Stray links:
Band/Artist location – TURIN (ITALY)
Facebook – You Tube – Soundcloud – Twitter – Instagram –
Apple – Spotify – Amazon – Deezer – LinkTree – TikTok –
Check our page for As We Stray
