INTERVIEW W/ STONE: "It's given me a purpose"!

Over the last few years, STONE have quickly become one of the most exciting acts coming out of the North-West thanks to their anthemic, life-affirming Rock sound and visceral live performances. Having first built a tight knit community across Merseyside, they rapidly spread their gritty gospel across the UK and beyond supporting acts such as The Kooks, The Wombats and DMAs, signing with Polydor and playing a huge run of festivals which included an unforgettable Glastonbury set. Following the release of their debut album ‘Fear Life For A Lifetime’, we spoke with guitarist and songwriter Elliot Gill about their incredible journey, their personal development and the momentous landmark of a debut record. 

Photo Credit: Claudia Legge

For many, this record has been a long time coming. As their live shows got bigger and bigger at a rapid rate and tracks like ‘Money (Hope Ain’t Gone)’ and ‘Leave It Out’ became anthems for a frustrated youth, fans began to long for a full length album. Elliot explained how the band share the same feeling, yet acknowledged that these past years of growth have been vital to give this record the impact it deserves: “I think this is definitely the time to bring out an album. We started this band at the end of 2019 but when COVID hit the world the whole industry went into standstill so that took a lot of momentum away at a point when we were really starting to get serious with the project. We’ve now spent the last two years doing the gig circuit, supporting amazing bands and becoming a live force. Then we also released the ‘Punkadonk’ series which was like a mini album in itself and almost a taster to show what we can do and how versatile the STONE sound is. We needed these years to build the buzz but I can’t wait any longer!  Me and Finn have been working together nearly nine years so I think a full length work is way overdue”.

Despite this eagerness to finally get the album out into the world, STONE remain hugely thoughtful and appreciative of the key moments that have led them to this point. Often , when placed on such a high-speed, one-way trajectory it can be hard to take a moment to look behind you, yet Elliot reflected on some of the amazing experiences that the band have been through over the years: “I've been looking at my life a lot over the course of making the album and I think the bottom line is that I'm so fucking grateful for all these opportunities that we've had. Whether it’s playing Reading and Leed in 2021 and going to vermont and working with Rich Costey or playing with Louis Thomlinson and going out to Europe in places like Malaga, Rome, Belgium and Holland. I mean, having our songs sung back to us in a foreign country is something I’ll never get used to. Just that moment of being in an airport and knowing that music has taken us there is unreal. Playing Glastonbury last year also felt like an incredible rite of passage”.

These key steps in the STONE timeline have been massive for the band, bringing their electrifying intensity and poignant Punk poetry to a global audience, gaining them slews of new fans along the way. Yet, it is clear that these moments have also had a significant impact on the band on a personal level: “It's been a real journey. I'm very happy because music has always been something that I wanted to do since I was a small child. Now, all these years have gone by and I've played hundreds of gigs in front of thousands of people. I think, on a personal level, I have to remind myself of that at times because I could get up one day and feel super anxious or I could be in the line for Tesco and be anxious but the fact that I have the ability to play in front of a bunch of people playing guitar and write the songs that I've been writing says a lot for me. It's given me so much confidence and so much hope and done a lot for my own self-esteem really. I think what I do with the music is definitely fueled by those kinds of feelings. I feel like it's this sort of musical furnace where I can take the bad parts and turn it into fuel and cook up something good to enrich my life and that’s just everything for me”.

Elliot, who is open in admitting that he’s had battles with his own mental health, a personal story which he has written about on the album, seems overtly grateful for how the STONE community has helped him grow in confidence: “I think it's made me a lot more positive which isn’t always easy to do in this world but most of all it's given me an outlet and it's given me a purpose. It's given me something that's bigger than myself and when I'm not feeling very good, I have to remember that there's people out there that are relying on me and there's people out there that care. I've heard people say they went through a horrible breakup but listened to STONE to help get them through it which is mad! It's made me feel like I'm part of something that's bigger than just me”.

Speaking of the STONE community, it is not your usual group of casual fans. It is a conglomeration of people of all kinds who have bought into the STONE ideology, connected to their emotive, empowering lyricism and share a true lust for life, expressed through sonic celebration. This community is key to the band as a project and plays a vital role in what this debut album will become. 

“We’re trying to build a community around what we’re doing. I was so humbled when we did our Punkadonk events and met fans with tattoos of Stone, fans that had made jackets and badges, fans that had drawn pictures of us, all that stuff is crazy to me, it's so surreal. I think that's probably my favorite part, just knowing that it could all end but there's people out there who we've become a part of their lives, and I just think that's incredible”.

He also explained how they want the STONE community to make this album their own: “The album has a mix of so many different experiences and emotions that all of us have experienced. There’s definitely some personal moments but once the album is out it belongs to the people and they can take out whatever they want from it. We don't want to over explain too much. We also want people to just have it stuck in their heads, you know? There's some really great melodies and hooks all throughout it and I just want people to come back to it in the future and show their mates or show their kids or whatever”.

This idea of legacy and building something much more than just a collection of songs that exists in one time and place is a common theme in everything that STONE do. This is one of the factors that has allowed fans to connect so deeply with their music. Of course their are lyrics about going out and about love, both lost and longed for, but when digesting their lyricism as a whole, you get a much greater sense of primal feelings that each and every one of us experiences throughout life. Thus, this record is not one that will be lost by the moving tides of time but rather one that will stick with the STONE community for a lifetime, a sentiment captured in the title of the album.

“We actually had the album title before we even had a song out. Me and him co-wrote this little poem that acts as a kind of interlude at our live shows. It’s one of those that almost sounds like a bank advert, you know… “this one's for the street fighters, this one’s for the kids on Instagram…”  and he just had this end in line which said ‘fear life for a lifetime’. The whole album encompasses so many themes of growing up and the anxieties of coming of age and being scared and how much that fear is intrinsic to the human experience. We want people to feel a big spectrum of those feelings of frustration and angst. We are in this absolute confusing clusterfuck of a period in life with so much information bombardment and the natural reaction is to just be like ‘ wow, this is fucking scary’. The album ties in all of the frustrations and angst and fears that we feel for a lifetime”.