A Chat with Taxi With Strangers (02.09.20)
Influenced by acts like Oasis, The Smiths, Circa Waves and Pulp, Taxi With Strangers is a UK foursome with a unique and innovative indie-rock sound. Form in 2018, founding members Adam Murphy-Jackson and Jake Bellamy began recording as a duo, but with plans for further growth. By mid-2020, Taxi With Strangers included Jake Bellamy (guitar), Toby Weatherill (drums) and Dave Morton-Jones (vocals and bass) We spoke to the group about their latest release ‘TIME’, future plans and favourite fruits.
OSR: What can you tell us about ‘TIME’?
Taxi with Strangers: It was one of the first songs we wrote alongside ‘Green Jacket’. We’ve been playing it at most of the gigs the past year and it goes down a treat! It’s all about living for the now, which is a song that is definitely needed with this shit-show going on.
OSR: Your debut single ‘Green Jacket’ was released one year after forming the band. Why wait so long?
Taxi with Strangers: There was a lot of things going on; it took us a while to find the right band members and even when we did there was a lot of rearranging of roles. Then after almost a year of gigging we went into the studio with our producer Andris at Heavy Rain Sound Studio and settled on ‘Green Jacket’ to be our debut.
OSR: Which is your favourite venue to play?
Taxi with Strangers: It has to be Kings Arms in Morecambe. The response of that gig from our fans was unreal! You can see how buzzing they were in our music video for ‘Breaking The Interval’ on our YouTube channel.
OSR: Which was your least favourite?
Taxi with Strangers: The Park Hotel in Morecambe – not because of the venue but because it was our second gig and everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. Jake was out of tune for most of the set, despite tuning several times, timing was off and was just a general mess on our behalf. *laugh*
Happy to say we’re much better now.
OSR: How would you describe your sound?
Taxi with Strangers: Unique. The dreamy soft guitars on top of the hard punky drums mixed with the melodic bass lines and powerful vocals results in a class sound!
OSR: How did the name Taxi with Strangers come about?
Taxi with Strangers: The band name literally came from Jake and his mate Matt getting a taxi with some strangers to Liverpool Lime Street in order to get to Manchester after the initial train broke down halfway to Liverpool!
OSR: What is your favourite fruit and why?
Bellamy: I’m a simple (boring?) man – just apples and bananas for me.
Weatherill: My favourite fruit is a grape because they are nice.
Mortan-Jones: My favourite fruits are apricots! Super fruit, great for you and delicious when ripe.
OSR: What, for you, is the most frustrating thing about being in lockdown?
Taxi with Strangers: Well, the hardest thing from the bands point of view was not being able to rehearse and our gigs being cancelled. We had more gigs booked for 2020 than we had ever played!
OSR: When can we expect more material?
Taxi with Strangers: Hard to say, but we’ve recently been back in the studio with Andris to record some new tracks unlike anything you’ve ever heard! So keep your eyes peeled for them!
OSR: Do you have a message for our readers?
Taxi with Strangers: Shameless self plug – check out our latest single ‘TIME’ on all major streaming platforms. Oh, and check out our new sick Twitter account!
Thanks to the lads of Taxi with Strangers for chatting with us. Find out more about Taxi with Strangers on their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Spotify.
