Interview with George David Webster (Guitar) of New Divide and Pete Devine of Pete’s Rock News and Views (http://petesrocknewsandviews.com)
PD: What type of artist are you?
GDW: We are an Alternative Band from Manchester. Made up of myself (GEORGE DAVID WEBSTER – Guitar), CHARLOTTE ISOBEL (Vocals), THOMAS WEBSTER (Guitar), CARL WHITTLE (Bass) and ELIZA WHEATLEY (Drums).
PD: Tell us the brief history of yourself.
GDW: Me (George David) and Tom had been in and out of different bands for years. The Preston scene is pretty small, so we’d played in bands together with Carl throughout high-school and college. After lockdown we were moving to Manchester to study various music courses at Uni, our last band had just ended rather badly, so we were in need of a singer and drummer. Tom sent out a message into a couple of student music groups on Facebook, and within the hour we were talking to Charlotte and Eliza.
PD: Who are your musical and non-musical influences?
GDW: Our music taste is so eclectic, between the five of us we’ve got it all covered. It was a struggle at first to refine each of our tastes into one cohesive style, we have moved between pop, rock, indie and everything in between over the last year, but with our latest piece, Delora, it feels like we have finally found our sound.
Personally, my biggest influences right now are the artists on the Dirty Hit label. We have always been a band that strived to be something more than the typical “rock band”, the synthesis of sonic and visual art that bands such as Wolf Alice, Pale Waves and The 1975 achieve has always inspired us.
PD: What are your dreams and goals?
GDW: We want it all. The next goal is to step up to play the festival stages, we played our first festival (The Neighbourhood Festival) back in October, and since then we’ve been hooked. It was always a goal to play a festival, so to do so within the first year of being a band felt so special.
PD: Who writes your songs, what are they about?
GDW: So far me and Charlotte have been the primary songwriters, this newest track is a one we worked on together. Often I will bring a demo to the band, usually in a semi-formed state, and they will each add their ideas or parts to it. We’ll just play it over and over in the practice room to work out the kinks, then the real test is when we debut them on stage.
All of our songs are deeply personal to us, they tend to be more introspective. Delora is the amalgamation of the toxic people in a relationship that manipulate their partner, controlling them through guilt and conditional love until they
become the only one you rely upon. Written when their corrupted love turns to an obsession over another, someone or something else, you learn that you have begun to covet their attention, to depend upon them.
PD: How do you promote your band and shows?
GDW: We document everything we do as a band on our socials, from gigs, to new tracks we are working on, to the day to day minutia of being in a rock band. Live shows have just re-started for the new year, so we have been ramping up for those. Honestly, our favourite thing that we’ve just started to do is booking these small, intimate gigs between the big headline shows. It’s so fun to play these tight, sweaty venues, and we love the challenge of winning over a totally fresh crowd that has never heard of us.
PD: What song do you wish you’d written and why?
GDW: Lyrically, I wish we had written American Teenager by Ethel Cain. The lyrics are very poetic and deep and quite sad when separated from the upbeat music. However, instrumentally I wish we had written Lisbon by Wolf Alice. It has such great breakdowns in the song in between the choruses and verses and when I listen to it I always think about how amazing it would be to play that live in a band. (Eliza)
PD: What are some of your pet peeves?
GDW: A pet peeve of ours has to be when we get a lazy sound technician at a gig. When the good ones come around they’re a godsend. (Tom)
PD: What is your proudest moment in music?
GDW: In our penultimate show before Christmas we were booked as a support act to play AATMA, it is notorious for being one of the hottest, sweatiest rooms to play in manchester, and it’s next to impossible to actually find the venue 
itself. The gig was almost called off last minute, we didn’t really know any of the other bands on the line-up, and we were expecting it to be empty.
It felt like the gig where our mindset switched, we just let go of the nerves and stress around it and just let ourselves play for us. Now, Manchester crowds are known for being hard to please, they know what they like, and if they don’t like your band there’s 50 others playing just around the corner that they can go and watch instead. So, when midway through the set they started a proper mosh pit, that felt like an achievement. You’re not a real rock band till someones broken something in a pit at your gig.
PD: So what are you working on at the moment?
GDW: Right now we are preparing to get back into the studio to work on our next track. We’ve just started gigging again for the new year, and we’ve got some shows lined up that are going to be big.
PD: What music have you available online and where can we buy it from?
GDW: We just released our new single, Delora, on January 20th. That is out now everywhere, you can find the links to stream and buy it at https://linktr.ee/NEWDIVIDE
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