Red Eye at Leeds Festival 2007

We caught up with the Belfast band when they played the Topman Unsigned Stage at Leeds Festival in 2007. The band are: Chris H (lead guitar), Chris M (bass/vocals), Dave (drummer), and Jason (rhythm guitar).

You guys have come all the way from Northern Ireland today. The weather’s held out for you: how was the set today?

Chris M: It was a really, really good set. We really, really enjoyed ourselves. Actually got a good lot of people down, a lot of people seemed to get into it. So hopefully we’ll drum up a bit of interest for ourselves.

Is this your first festival, and how does this compare to performances back home in Ireland?

Chris H: Yeah, this is our first ever festival. It’s fantastic. I mean, compared to performances back home it’s a really good crowd. We were expecting maybe not that many people come to see us being an unsigned band and everything. You know, it was good to play a big stage. Fantastic!

I noticed when you were performing someone threw a bottle at you on stage. How do you react to things like that when you’re performing and something like that happens?

Chris H: I just laughed, I saw it coming. As long as it doesn’t hit anyone I don’t care.

Chris M: And obviously the person who threw it was angry, and I wasn’t.

Jason: As long as they’re not glass, I’m happy.

Chris H: You can only laugh it off, ‘cos at the end of the day you’re having a fantastic time on the festival stage. Y’know what I mean?

Chris M: The answer is to jump off the stage and beat them. Everyone drop your instruments and run straight at them!

Tell us some more about red eye; how did you guys get together?

Dave: We formed not much more than a year ago. We all sort of knew each other from various bands, and we thought “well, why not just give it a go?” We put our first single out a couple of months ago through iTunes and stuff. And we’ve just been gigging and trying to build up a reputation. Then this thing came along and we thought “happy days” and thought we’d give it a go. We’re relatively new, we’re having a great time.

You describe yourself as a rock band, but what can people really expect from Red Eye?

Dave: Straight up hard rock, no messing about. We’ve don’t go in for messing around...

Jason: Really, just a good show. Get in peoples’ faces a bit – a bit of attitude, which I think a lot of bands lack nowadays.

Chris H: Just trying to, y’know, fill our songs with hooks and make an energetic live show. A lot of bands these days forget about putting across the energy. There are still bands out there doing it but not enough.

Dave: We want to entertain people. We don’t want people to come down and be sitting...we want people to enjoy the show.

You say that you want to be the best band you can, but how do bands over here compare to bands back home in Northern Ireland? Is the culture different with bands over there?

Chris M: There seems to be a lot more diversity in England, probably just because it’s a bigger place. The music scene in Northern Ireland is okay, there’s a few good bands who have come out of it. But because there are a lack of bands to get recognised in England might be a lot harder because there’s so much more competition. But overall it seems to be a lot more competitive over here.

You released your Bloodshot EP back in June on iTunes – what kind of response have you had from that?

Jason: We’ve had a good response. We’ve had a few reviews there on a few Northern Ireland sites and stuff. We sent a few demos out and we actually got played on Radio 1. There’s a session in Northern Ireland which is done by Rory McConnell and we sent out CD in; he played that and actually gave us an interview too. That’s probably the biggest response we’ve had so far, and we’re all really encouraged by that.

You sound like you’re doing pretty well in England at the moment, especially performing here at Leeds today. Do you have any more dates planned over here?

Jason: Not really at present, but we’ve actually been offered three gigs in London, but the details are still to follow on that. We don’t know where it’s at or what’s happening with that.

Chris M: Aye.

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