Interview - Altered Sky

Glasgow-based Altered Sky are a Scottish female-fronted rock band with some seriously catchy songs. There first album "Without Wonderland" has been a huge success for the band. I caught up with the lovely Amy Blair (drums) to see what its like being Altered Sky right now, and to chat about their plans for this year!

CB – Hi! Thank you for taking the time to have a chat with me today! So, for those who have never heard of or listened to Altered Sky, can you give us a little introduction?

Amy - Hey! We’re a Rock band from Glasgow. We love melody and harmony as much as heavy riffs and powerful drums and we aim to try and keep those elements in our songs.

CB – You guys seem to be going from strength to strength, and I see that you have recently been on Kerrang! Radio – how was that experience?

Amy - It’s always a bit surreal for us to be able to say we’re on Kerrang! Radio. The support we’ve been receiving from Johnny Doom especially has been absolutely tremendous and we honestly couldn’t be more grateful! It’s a dream come true in itself.

CB – Also see that you have a summer tour planned! How do you all find touring, and in particular, how do you find the sound when Altered Sky play live? Do you have a lot of sound techs working behind the scenes?

Amy - We love touring! It’s always such good fun for us all to be able to hang out and play shows every night. We’ve met some awesome bands and made some great friends along the way. Every show is different, stage size, venue shape, all of the factors that affect sound for us onstage as well as out front. We’ve never had our own sound tech, it’s another thing we aspire to having within the Altered Sky arsenal! We would love to have one. As we can’t hear much out the front it’s great for us to have our manager there to help us and the sound guy produce our best possible sound every night!

CB – I know that there are a lot more female-fronted rock bands emerging in Scotland now, but do either of the ladies in the band receive any discrimination or sexist remarks? As a girl in Sound Production, I have had a fair few myself!!!

Amy - It doesn’t happen to us a lot, of course the girls especially need to develop a bit of a harder shell when it comes to these things. It seems to be getting better, a lot less guys expecting the girls to just be there for show! We like to think that as soon as we start playing and show them what we’re made of, those little comments will become less and less and they’ll turn to respect!

CB – What can we expect to see from Altered Sky in 2016? Any more music videos?

Amy - Well we’re not going anywhere that’s for sure! Definitely, we’re planning on releasing at least two more singles along with videos from our debut album Without Wonderland. It’s gonna be a lot of fun!

CB – With regard to your time in recording studios, how do you find the experience? Can you take us through a typical Altered Sky recording session?

Amy - We love recording. The process is really fun and we love Romesh! He brings out the best in all of us in every single song we do and we are forever grateful to him for helping us produce what we have so far! We can’t wait to work with him on the next project. So drums come first! We always lay down some guide tracks for Amy to work alongside which involves all of us playing through our parts of the songs, just playing through the tunes. Then Amy will play along with that and record the drums, then Ross records him bass, then guitars and finally vocals on the top. It’s such an amazing experience, being able to hear everything build up from the ground!

CB – Finally, is there anything that you want to say to Altered Sky fans?

Amy - We adore you all and we love the support you guys give us every single day! We absolutely wouldn’t be where we are right now without you all, so thank you!

To keep up to date with all Altered Sky news, please visit:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/alteredsky

Twitter: www.twitter.com/alteredsky

Instagram: Alteredsky