Industry Insight | The Phantom Project Interview
August 4 | Written BY Kirsten Moreton
The Phantom Project are an up and coming Glasgow base indie rock group, creating high energy and high quality tracks. This week The Music Mag had the opportunity to interview this incredible band and discover more about the origins, the present and what is to come for The Phantom Project.
1. What is the story behind The Phantom Project and the name, how did it begin?
It goes a while back really, Colin originally started off in a band called the phantoms and over time the band had members come and go until Jamie took over as drummer and Fonzo took over lead guitar. Up until about 2019 it was the 3 of us and our bassist at the time Andrew. He eventually left to go be a session musician on cruises and Fonzo had known Lee from Uni and I think he was the only bassist we knew at the time so Fonzo gave him a message to see if he wanted to join! We were still “The Phantoms” at the time but once lee had joined we almost had a ship of Theseus situation. So we decided to start fresh with a new name but we still wanted to honour all the influences that we had from the early days of The Phantoms.
2. What are the current aims for your music?
I suppose want what every band wants, we want to tour the world, make a bit of money and get as many people listening to our tunes as possible!
3. What would you like to bring to your music?
I think we generally want to bring a live feel to everything we do, we write our songs to be the best they possibly can be live! Even when recording we want that same energy that we would bring to a live gig and we hope that comes through in our tracks.
4. What was some of your inspirations when starting out?
One of the cool things about the band is that we all bring some different inspiration to the table, Fonzo is an old school rock kinda guy so he’s shredding all over the place, Lee is more into metal so he’s just an angry wee guy, Jamie brings a bit of Kings of Leon and Colin’s huge into his oasis vibes!
5. What was the inspiration around your release ‘Ink On Paper’?
Really it’s an odd one, we were originally writing it as this really bassy and grungy and we played the main riff really low. Then one week Lee was away on holiday but we didn’t want to put the song on hold so Fonzo started playing the riff on guitar and we just loved the vibe! So we sent a clip to lee and we all decided that that was the way forward and it became a lot dancier! Then from there we just started messing around.
6. What are your thoughts on the Scottish music scene and community?
It’s great, there bands and acts covering all ends of the spectrum and so many of them are absolutely insane. We’ve been genuinely blown away by a lot of the acts we’ve seen and gotten to work with. We’re a wee bit spoiled with the music scene we have!
7. Do you have a favourite venue to visit or play in?
McChuills without a doubt, the vibe is off the charts.
8. What is your favourite show you have played?
Also McChuills! Last time we played there might be the best gig we’ve ever played and regardless it’s definitely been our favourite!
9. What is the main goal for The Phantom Project where would you like to be in ten years?
Touring somewhere warm and sunny we hope! Realistically though we’d definitely like to make this our careers. We know it’s a long road but 10 years is a long time!
10. Live, The Phantom Project have a talent for engaging the audience and creating a buzz within a room. How do you do that and maintain that energy throughout?
I think it’s because we’re all a wee bit vain (except fonzo he’s really vain) so we just kinda go out with the intent to look better than the rest of the lads! Really though I think it comes from just loving everything about live music, from the start to the end of our set we’re just absolutely buzzing out our wee nuts!
11. What are you looking forward to most for The Phantom Project?
Our NEW latest single, Tripping! By the time this is out the song will already be on all your favourite streaming platforms!
12. Are there any bands or artists in the UK scene you think deserves a some more recognition?
Dictator 100% they’ve been doing really well for ages, but they deserve to be massive.
13. What are some of the challenges in starting out as a musician?
Making a statement is huge. I think we got lucky since we effectively started out fresh after covid stopping us from gigging for 2 years. We got offered to support a band called Wrest at La Belle and it was mad for us, Wrest have been killing it for a long time and when we seen the crowd they brought we really couldn’t afford to be anything less than 10/10. So we gave it the best we could and we think it worked, the crowd loved it! And that set the bar for us, we couldn’t let ourselves be anything less than that!
14. What has been your proudest moment so far?
Definitely we’ve been really proud of selling out our last 2 headlines back to back. I think every band goes through a phase of asking themselves “is this really working out” and then we managed to sell out McChuills on the day when last year around the same we couldn’t even sell out 13th Note! So this has absolutely been a proud couple months for us.
15. What is next for The Phantom Project?
Well by the time this is out we’ll have released Tripping but we’re currently working on the single after that and all we’ll say is it sounds huge. We’ve also got a couple of gigs we’re really excited about over the next few months and hopefully we can keep our momentum going into them too! This years focus was absolutely nailing some stellar gigs and next year we’re hoping for some festival stages!
Listen to ‘Tripping’ here.
Read our review on The Phantom Project here.
Check out The Phantom Project on Spotify here.
Follow The Phantom Project here.
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