DJ Interviews: Black Star Jackals

 Here's my interview with The Black Star Jackals

How'd you get started in music? The band itself was formed by Kieran (lead singer) in late 2018. Initially he intended it to just be a 3 piece, Biffy Clyro style, and for the band to just be a vehicle for his own songs, which until that point he had been singing by himself in various open mic nights around Glasgow. After a few months he realised he needed another guitarist to flesh out the sound and take some of the workload off of him, as he was the only guitarists and he put an ad out on Facebook. Coincidentally, Steven (lead guitar), who had just left his previous band and was on the look out for a new project, saw the ad and got in touch. They exchanged demos and got talking and found out they had loads in common and very similar musical influences and tastes. Steven joined the band in late 2018 and realised that it had serious potential thanks to Kieran’s amazing voice and songwriting ability and so they set about taking the band seriously. By mid 2019 Max (bass) and Calum (drums) had joined the band and the lineup as its is today was formed. Who are your inspirations or influences? Our most obvious influences are the bands we grew up listening to as kids. Generally speaking the alt-rock bands of the 90’s and 00’s such as Foo Fighters, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, Muse, Biffy Clyro, System of a Down, to name a few. But individually we all come from very different musical backgrounds. Steven and Max for example are both classically trained and both attended Royal Colleges of Music. Calum has a background in folk music, having played bagpipes too. People often say they can hear this or that in our music and it ranges from Incubus to Genesis to The Police to Pink Floyd to Steve Reich and  so on. We’re proud that we have such a diverse sound and that we can draw on such a wide range of influences. It stops us being pigeon holed. Special thanks to them for this interview, & I wish them lots of luck in their music. So untol then I'll catch you on The Flipside! Stay awesome & rock n roll! What advice would you offer aspiring performers? We don’t know if we’re really in the position to be offering advice to anyone to be honest! Hell we’re the ones needing advice!  I guess we can only offer advice we have been given ourselves which we try to live by. For us the main thing is to just be authentic and genuine. The music world is filled with fake people doing stuff they don’t really believe in or acting in a way that isn’t real. You can see it seeping into the the pop punk and rock scene more and more sadly. We’ve started seeing more and more acts live singing to backing tracks, using autotune and even miming and that shit just needs to stop now. Fake people always get found out eventually, so be real from the start. How do you set yourselves apart from other bands or singers? Tough for us to answer that question ourselves, as we aren’t really actively thinking about doing as such. Our music is what it is. We just write what we like and it seems that what comes out sounds like Black Star Jackals! We make an effort to get the production we can afford on our songs. We’ve noticed that a lot of artists at a similar stage to us seem to skimp out on the recording side of things and as such the quality of the tracks is a bit lacking and we think it's super important that the music sounds as good as it can to do it justice.  Our image kind of sets us apart too, or at least what we wear. We don’t necessarily look like an alt-rock band at first glance and we like that. We recently did a rock festival and out of all the acts who played that day, we were literally the only ones not dressed all in black. Theres nothing wrong with that, but its just not our vibe. The world doesn’t need another mopey rock band wearing dark skinny jeans and leather jackets! Any new gigs or albums in the future? We’ll be headlining the Garage Attic in Glasgow on 10th December with some awesome support acts including Cloud House. We’ve just finished recording two new songs for next year, one of which will be part of a big collaboration album project we’ve started. Its going to be an album featuring some of the best up-and-coming indie acts in Glasgow, with each act contributing one unreleased single to the album. Its going to be amazing.