The Seamonsters are a Sheffield band with their sights set on indie stardom.
Established four years ago in a teenage daze, they’ve only recently started to turn heads, progressing from a throwaway covers band into something potentially exceptional.
With only old demos online so far – “we are a lot better than those”, say the band – they’ve developed their following purely through live shows and old school word of mouth.
The Seamonsters – Naomi Mann, Holly Thompson, Tassie Drobinski, Lauren Smith and Ciara Hurding – first met in school, with a long-time sixth member recently leaving the band.
They’re set to finally release their first single proper in the summer, and are about to play their first tour dates outside of their hometown.
They’re also on the bill for the second Outlines Festival in March, with more live performances and news to follow.
Katy got to know The Seamonsters for the first FEISTY Introduces, as the girls opened up on their backstory, sexism, and their plans to skip out on university for the band.
Thanks for agreeing to meet up with me for FEISTY Introduces! There’s five of you, is it hard to organise things with so many members?
Everyone: “Yeah!”
Ciara: “Sometimes there’s stages that we can’t all fit on to.”
Naomi: “I think writing songs is quite hard when we all have lots of ideas, but I think the main problem is stages.”
You’re called The Seamonsters, despite being from Sheffield, which is as far from the sea as it gets! Where did the name come from?
Ciara: “Oh god, OK. It was this drama group that we went to when we were like 12, and we were sea monsters in a play. We had just started the band, and couldn’t think of a name, so we thought as a joke, ‘Oh haha, we should call our band this!’ It’s kind of stuck since then.
“It was also that the sea monsters were really small parts in the play, and we wanted to do something with the name, show we could do something more than being a really small part.”
Tassie: “We were always in the background of things. We were in choir together as well, and we were always in the back, we wanted to show we weren’t always in the back.”
Holly: “I wasn’t even there! I didn’t even exist at this point.”
Naomi: “I don’t even know if we decided to call ourselves The Seamonsters before we practiced. No?”
Tassie: “I think we decided we’d have a band before we had a practice, so we just turned up and started playing.”
The idea of the band itself came from a drama group, right?
Lauren: “I had – and still have – a festival at my house every year with lots of bands. There were guys in bands our age and they were all playing, but we were like making up dance routines and stuff. We decided it’d be really cool to try out what everyone else was doing.”
Naomi: “We were friends before we were in a drama group, but we thought of the idea of a band around the time of that.”
Holly: “I didn’t know you guys!”
Naomi: “Yeah, I think you were friends with Lauren and just kind of turned up at the practice.”
Would you all say you’re all quite unique individuals, or that you have similar interests?
Naomi: “I’d say it’s a mix.”
Ciara: “We all like quite similar bands and stuff, but we have different variations. I’d say we dress similarly.”
Tassie: “We all have different personalities and all listen to different things and do different things, but a lot of the stuff we like is the same as well and it sort of works as a band.”
There’s been six members of The Seamonsters up until now, but recently your original keyboardist Lydia Wood left. Is it strange to not be the same band you’ve been for so long anymore?
Ciara: “It only happened very recently, and we’re definitely thinking about getting a new sixth member. We’ve based a lot of our songs around the keyboards, and we want to keep our old songs and try to keep that sound.”
You’ve played your first gig way back in 2013. When you first got together, what did you set out to do? Did you want to have fun or try to make it big one day?
Naomi: “I think fun at first, I definitely don’t think we were thinking of being big. We just started doing covers, really, and we were very young as well. We never thought it’d be a serious thing. Also, there was another band that went to our school, and it was a bit like we wanted to be as good as them. A mini rivalry, you know?”
What’s happened to them? Are they still together?
Naomi: “No, they’re not a band anymore!”
Tassie: “It’s got more serious in the past six months. We’re all planning our lives around the band.”
Naomi: “It’s all we want to do now. When we first started writing songs, we didn’t think we would begin to do proper gigs and record songs.”
You’re all 17 to 18 years old now, and some of you will be thinking about going to university. A lot of young bands break up around this point, what are you planning to do?
Ciara: “We’ve all had a conversation about it and we’re either going to go to uni in Sheffield or have a year out.”
Tassie: “I feel like I can go to university or not. We’ll see how the band goes in the next year.”
That’s great news! In your first interviews The Wombats always seemed to come up as a band you’d like to emulate. What was it specifically about them that was a blueprint for the band?
Naomi: “I think it was the fact that we all really liked them. We’d done a couple of covers, and that sound really influenced us. The techno, keyboard sound.”
Ciara: “It was the only indie band we knew that had keyboards a few years ago, and we really wanted to incorporate those sorts of sounds, so we listened to a lot of their stuff for inspiration.”
How is your sound changing now that you’re taking things more seriously and getting a bit older?
Naomi: “We’ve got more experience writing songs now, and also more recent influences.”
Lauren: “The time signatures and bridges are a lot more complicated now.”
Ciara: “We’re influenced by new bands like Black Honey now, basing our sound off bands like them. Style as well, we never really thought about that in the past.”
Naomi: “The style really links with the music, we’ve created an image on our social media, and when we release music this year it’ll really fit with that.”
Let’s talk about that music a little bit. So far you’ve released a number of demos online?
Lauren: “They were live recordings at Yellow Arch, they’re all live and from one day.”
Naomi: “They were demos because we thought we should record what we had, and we put them on SoundCloud. They don’t really reflect our music now, because they’re pretty old and we’ve improved.
“It’ll be really good when we release our new music because people want to hear what we sound like now.”
What’s happening with the new music at the moment?
Lauren: “It’s recorded, pretty much.”
Naomi: “We’re going to be releasing our first proper single at some point this year, and then a few more after that.”
Ciara: We’ve already decided what our first single is, and we’re going to have it out in the summer, we think.
So still quite a while away, then?
Lauren: “Yeah, got to get that promo up!”
There’s a lot more all-girl bands appearing lately. There’s still not as many as there should be, but why do you think it’s now becoming more of a thing?
Ciara: “I think maybe that when you see other girl bands you just get the idea. There’s not really been many at all in the past, so people haven’t even thought about it, and just seeing other girl bands influences you to start one I think.”
Naomi: “We all liked music and performing. We realised that the fact we were all girls made us stand out, but that wasn’t why we formed it.”
Ciara: “We started because of boys that were doing it our age. We never really thought being an all-girl band would have any impact, because we were quite young, but it has actually been an advantage to us.”
Are there any other bands like yourselves that you’re particularly fans of?
Ciara: “We like Hinds and The Big Moon, and Black Honey and Wolf Alice, who’ve both got girl singers. But I still think in comparison to the amount of bands with boys in that we like, there’s just nowhere near the same amount.”
Is there a certain expectation still to behave or be a certain way as an all-girl band? Have you had anyone that’s been very stereotypical or sexist along the way?
Lauren: “There’s been a lot of patronising, from sound guys and people like that. I’ve studied music tech, I know a lot about that, but they’ll still take my jack lead and plug it into the amp for me and stuff.”
Ciara: “It’s also stuff like, people have said to me, ‘Oh, you’re actually really good at the drums’ or ‘I didn’t expect you to be that good’. You wouldn’t say that to a boy. The other thing is before we go on-stage, we’re called an all-girl band, and people are just expecting Little Mix or something.”
Holly: “They introduce us as an ‘all-girl band’, but if guys went on they wouldn’t be like, ‘all-male band’, they’re just a band.”
You’re going to be playing Outlines Festival in March, which is one of your first festivals and also in your hometown. How did that come about?
Ciara: “We messaged The Harley [a venue in Sheffield], asking if they had any support slots that we could do. They replied back, saying they didn’t have any at the moment, but asking if we’d like to play Outlines instead.”
Lauren: “They were thinking of asking us anyway, I think?”
Ciara: “Yeah, they said they’d heard of us. We were super excited and said yes straight away, obviously!”
Is there any other live stuff coming up that people should know about?
Naomi: “We’re playing some gigs across the country, which we haven’t really done before!”
Ciara: “We’re doing one in Cambridge and one in Nottingham. We haven’t really played outside of Sheffield at all, so it’s going to be really good, and we’re hoping to do some more gigs in different parts of the country as well.”
What can people expect from you when you perform live?
Lauren: “Loudness!”
Ciara: “I think because of the demos we have online, people are always quite surprised at how good we are, because we are a lot better than those, the new songs and also we play those demo songs a lot better now as well.”
Finally, just to wrap up, where do things go for The Seamonsters from here?
Ciara: “We’re going to release some music, and do more gigs outside of Sheffield, and hopefully some festivals as well in the summer.”
Is there anything else?
Lauren: “Glitter!”
The Seamonsters are on Facebook and Twitter, and are performing live on the following dates:
January 14 – The Rocking Chair – Sheffield, UK (supporting Trash)
February 10 – Plug – Sheffield, UK (supporting Casey Lowry)
March 3 – Outlines Festival – Sheffield, UK
April 14 – The Portland Arms – Cambridge, UK
May 6 – The Bodega – Nottingham, UK
