For fans of: early Saves The Day, Crime In Stereo, Such Gold
Twitter: www.twitter.com/homeadvantageuk
Facebook:www.facebook.com/homeadvantage
Featuring members of the now defunct Keeping Scores and the quite brilliant Pacer, London Pop Punk band – Home Advantage are something of an exciting prospect, simply because they’re offering something different, in a scene that is seriously over saturated with bands that sound just too similar – Home Advantage are truly standing out from the crowd, securing themselves some high profile support slots in the process, most recently with The Wonder Years at their sold out Kingston show in April, the future is bright for this lot, no doubt about it, if you like your pop punk with an emotionally driven edge then look no further because Home Advantage are the band for you.
Below is an interview with the band where we talked about how the band begun, what’s in store for the future and their best moment as a band so far. You can also hear ‘Barriers’ from their Demo EP.
Hey guys, to kick things off, let’s get an Introduction, for those who aren’t aware, who is Home Advantage and what do you play?
“Home Advantage is an emotive pop-punk band from North London. I say emotive cos we play relatively fast pop-punk but take huge influence from a lot of emo and melodic hardcore bands as well.
My name is Alex Mills and I play guitar and provide backing & co-vocals – the English equivalent of John Nolan from Taking Back Sunday if you will, Ross Shroff is our frontman, Mike Turner our bassist, Liam Clayton is on guitar and vocals and Alex Cooke on drums.”
How did the band come together?
“Mike and I played together in a hardcore band called Keeping Scores which disbanded in 2010 when our singer quit. We initially planned to form a new, heavier band under a new name but things stalled and it just ultimately didn’t really work out. Mike & I have this strange, telepathic understanding of how we work together as musicians so when I mentioned my desire to play music inspired by 90s emo and pop-punk with him on board the seeds were sewn.
We found Alex (Cooke) via the Musicians Wanted/Needed section on the Punktastic forums and were very lucky that nobody else had snapped him up, and we’ve been friends with Ross for years so when he expressed interest to sing for us auditions weren’t necessary – he was IN before we’d even heard him sing. Thankfully he’s got a great voice and writes awesome lyrics so it worked out well!
That’s when I guess the band was born, Autumn 2011. We wrote, recorded a demo and when we asked around for a 2nd guitarist, Liam stepped up and we played our first show in March with Mest of all bands and it’s been all go from there.”
You released a two track demo back in December, how did you find the initial reaction to that?
“The reaction was pretty overwhelming. What a lot of people don’t realize is those songs were barely even fully written songs when we recorded them back in early October! The band was barely a few weeks old and we had only just decided on our name (Hang Time was our code-name for a while) when we recorded those tracks. We wanted to record the two ideas that could vaguely pass as songs just so we could have something online to make the band an actual thing if you know what I mean. That way we could set up a bandpage, start looking for shows, complete the line-up and give the band a real sense of drive and momentum that wouldn’t be possible without recordings.
Don’t get me wrong, we were quietly confident and knew that they were good songs, but for example we hadn’t finalized certain finer details like particular backing vocals and that kinda thing, and we didn’t have any equipment at the time so we had to borrow what we could and hope it sounded okay! Ben did such a phenomenal job and we’re very proud of the results, but it was merely intended to be a quick demo to give people a vague idea as to our sound. Given we were fresh out of the metaphorical womb at the time, we were more expecting peoples reactions to be something like ‘you guys have potential’, so to have so many people say such nice things, get played on the radio, be featured on a compilation (Close To Home & Pornography For Cowards) and recieve front page news on Punktastic so early on among other things was just amazing.”
Has the bands sound evolved in any way since that release?
“Everything is just bigger and better. I’d say we’re probably a little bit poppier perhaps – Liam’s addition has given us some really nice melodic lead parts and more vocal harmonies to add to the mix. We’re all generally a bit more confident in our abilities – those two tracks are still very representative of our sound and we’re hoping to re-record them with a larger budget – but as is natural in any new band we’ve improved as musicians so the quality of those two songs, as well as our new songs, is higher.
That said, for every poppy song we’ve written we have another song that’s faster and heavier. It’s why it’s so difficult for us to really describe our sound right now, we have one song that’s unashamedly radio pop-rock and then another that’s quite dark in tone so it’s cool to mix it up.”
Home Advantage has played a few shows in and around London, is there any show or moment in particular that sticks out for you?
“Lots of moments have stuck out for sure but I think any band who has been lucky enough to support The Wonder Years and The Swellers so early on in their ‘career’ would have to say that is the highlight. To play a sold out show at the Kingston Peel is special enough but to be able to share the stage with two exceptional bands really was an incredible opportunity. Bands like us owe a lot to The Wonder Years who really have helped the DIY, hardcore-influenced side of the pop-punk scene thrive over the last few years, so it was truly an honour.
To have the backing of Banquet Records is also something we’re really grateful for – we love Jon Tolley, the man is nothing less than an utter legend, so it has meant a lot that he has been so supportive of us.
We’ve made a lot of great friends over the last few months – bands such as Carridale, Think Big, Slowyear, Real Adventures, Forrest and other rad bands. Just being able to be part of a music scene again is such a special feeling and something I have personally missed since the last band ended. This sort of pop-punk scene has grown massively over the last couple of years so just to be a tiny part of it is a huge privelidge.”
What can we expect from Home Advantage going into the rest of the year?
“More shows for certain, we’re organizing an all-dayer in London trying to bring bands similar to us from other parts of the country down for one big bromance fest which should be amazing fun. There are some awesome shows in London coming up which we cannot confirm just yet but keep your eyes peeled.
Hopefully we can visit some other towns as well – we have friends and family in East Anglia, Leeds, Manchester The Midlands, the South and even Scotland so hopefully we can play some new places and play to some new faces. A tour would be lovely too but perhaps we’re not quite ready for that yet (though if anyone wants to bring us out on tour with them we won’t say no!).
We definitely intend to record soon. Whether that’s an album or a mini-album or EP is yet to be decided. For now we’re just writing and playing as often as we can and see where that takes us.”
Is there anything at all that you guys would like to add?
“Thank you so much to anyone who has given us any sort of attention – be it checking us out on Bandcamp and Facebook, telling your friends about us or coming to a show. Thanks to you guys at Punktastic as well for being so supportive of us so far – we owe you guys a lot!
If you haven’t done so already please hit up our Facebook page and Twitter Account at www.facebook.com/homeadvantage and www.twitter.com/homeadvantageuk and get in touch if you want us to play your town.
Also, support the good folk at Banquet Records, check out Close To Home Records, City Of Gold Records and All At Sea Records as well and listen to the following UK bands:
Our Time Down Here, Rob Lynch, Forrest, Real Adventures, Rivalries, Pacer, Shortcuts, The Lock and Keys, The Quarry, Chapels, Slowyear, Hot Damn and This Sudden Injury. All great bands that deserve your time
I personally advise everyone to watch the final season of One Tree Hill and please keep your fingers crossed for Ipswich Town FC next season but the rest of the band may not endorse this statement.
One love.”
Chris Marshman