FEATURE: Spotlight: Glossii — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Glossii

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ALTHOUGH NME have also highlighted…

a couple of recent artists I have put into my Spotlight feature, I have been aware of Glossii for a little while now. Like all great bands, they are hard to pin down or define. Glossii have been compared with Wolf Alice but, when you listen to their music, they are very much on their own plain. The band put out some music last year and, after being included in NME’s list of the one-hundred artists to watch this year, they must be thrilled! In terms of biography, here is some information from Camden Rocks Festival:

“Glossii is a four-piece post-punk band created around South London in early 2017 by Charlie Lock and Guitarist Lewis Smith, along with vocalist Sofia Zanghirella and latest joining member, drummer Reuben Rost.

Glossii’s hard-hitting riffs and bursts of aggression create the ubiquitous back-beat for Sofia’s femme-fatale lyrical insight- reminiscent of other bands such as Wolf Alice and Garbage with a detection and a nod to the original allure of Blondie.

2018 has been an impressive debut year for the band, performing at Camden Rocks Festival on the Doc Martens stage, supporting HMLTD in Guildford and releasing their debut single: Headache, which has received significant support from Diva Magazine & Amazing Radio.

Headache and Runaway Rockaway was produced, engineered and mixed at Eastcote Studios by the renowned George Murphy”.

I wonder what the band have planned for 2020. It is obvious there is momentum behind them and, as you can hear from the songs incorporated into this feature, they create a sound that is hard to forget – and it is original, despite comparisons to other acts.

There is something really down to Earth and relatable about Glossii; a band you could hang down the pub with and chill. There are not a lot of interviews and features out there about them but, when looking online, I did find a feature from NME from August:

“It’s a drizzly Tuesday night at the Shacklewell Arms and Glossii vocalist Sofia Zanghirella is delivering a menacing history lesson from the stage. “Divorced, beheaded, died!” she chants, making wild chopping motions. “Divorced, beheaded, survived!” Anyone getting hazy flashbacks to sitting on a tiny chair in a dingy classroom and learning about the Tudor period of British history? You’re not alone.

“Learned it in Year 2, and still doing it now,” smiles bassist Charlie Lock ahead of Glossii’s set at NME’s gig night Girls To The Front. He’s attempting to explain how on earth a children’s memory rhyme — which charts the gruesome fates of King Henry VIII’s six wives — found its way into a punk-rock band’s repertoire. “Henry VIII was her first crush,” he says of Sofia, who appears delighted. “Big boy, let me love you!” she declares, quoting a lyric from ‘Cut’. “I love Henry VIII. We like to take the piss out of how people love the monarchy so much. It’s a bit silly. It’s like a soap opera nowadays. Look in any magazine: The Queen does this, the queen does that. Ridiculous.”

It’s an apt introduction to Glossii’s kingdom, which started out not-too-seriously around two-and-a-half years ago — they’ve only been gigging for about 12 months. Charlie and guitarist Lewis Smith originally formed the band as an excuse to get glammed up. “I FaceTimed Lewis and asked him if he wanted to start a band where we would go in drag on stage,” Charlie recalls. Accidentally, their playful project turned into the real deal after a succession of increasingly bigger slots evolved into a kind of unofficial residency at The Boileroom in Guildford. Gradually, they found themselves sharing bills with like-minded bands HMLTD and Sorry. “Bands that we never thought we would be able to do things with,” admits Charlie. “I thought someone had made a mistake!”

A scrappy new band springs up out of south London’s incendiary music scene every week, it seems. Though Glossii are focused on “doing our own thing,” they reckon that for bands south of the river “there’s a community feel [as we] play in most of the same venues,” says Charlie. “We’ve made a lot of friends along the way”.

I think it is harder now to make an impression than ever; artists have to hustle and work all hours. Whilst I have seen many artists who were tipped a couple of years ago fade away, I think Glossii can build a big fanbase and play huge venues. The desire for an album is there as, inevitably, when an artists shows glimmers of promise and brilliance, there is that pressure.

I will wrap things up but, on the subject of features and interviews, I want to source from one more. Glossii spoke with Get in Her Ears last year and, in addition to talking about their formation, they also talked about the industry now and how it is set up for band:

“Hi Glossii, welcome to Get In Her Ears! Can you tell us a bit about the band? How did you initially all get together and start creating music?

We all used to play in different bands on a Saturday music club. Our bassist Charlie Face-timed Lewis asking to be in a band where they would go on stage in drag. It developed into the androgynous style we have today.

Your new single ‘Watching Me’ is out now – can you tell us what it’s all about?

‘Watching Me’ is about growing up and going against your parents’ rules.

You’ve been compared to the likes of Wolf Alice and Garbage, but who would you say are your main musical influences?

We each all have different influences, and that is what creates our sound. Between all of us our main influences are Wolf Alice, Slaves, Idles, Marmozets and Haze to name a few.

And how do you feel the music industry is for new bands at the moment – would you say it’s difficult to get noticed?

The music industry is hard for new bands to understand and it does take a huge amount of determination and perseverance to get noticed. Your music is not always going to be liked by everyone, even if it’s well produced or written, but your can’t take that to heart. Just move on and do what you like the sound of”.

Things are hotting up in the Glossii camp and, with the year ahead of them, many people are looking their way. It is quite right they are being tipped for success, so make sure you connect with them on social media and check out their music. The South London are primed to…