Interview Sprints: Bring It On
After celebrating debut album ‘Letter To Self’ with 103 shows last year, Dublin quartet Sprints are set to be one of the highlights of 2025’s festival season. With a packed live schedule on the horizon, it’ll double as the perfect opportunity to road test some new material…
Downtime is not something that has presented itself to Sprints of late. Particularly when they dropped an album of the year contender just five days into January 2024 - their sprawling punk opus, ‘Letter To Self’. “It was a wild year,” recalls frontwoman Karla Chubb, reeling off the statistics as she calls DIY from Dublin café Naked Bakes. “We did 103 shows last year, and we were away for about 250 days.”
Reading, gaming and playing tennis have replaced load-ins, soundchecks and long drives as the main parts of the Sprints day-to-day over the past few months, as Karla – who has recently rediscovered her love of reading through starting a book club with her friends – explains. “I was reading ‘Prophet Song’ by Paul Lynch, and I’m reading ‘Detransition, Baby’ right now… myself and Jack [Callan, drummer] are swapping books back and forth.
“Gaming-wise, we’ve all been playing anything that’s full of escapism. Zac [Stephenson, guitarist] completed ‘Elden Ring’ twice, and we’ve all been really into ‘Fallout: New Vegas’, which actually has played an influence on the new album massively – that dystopian other world.”
More on that later, but the immediate future for Sprints is another hectic festival season, where they’ll soon be packing for life on the road. “I hate myself when I say it, but I do have the itch again – when are we back on the road?” grins Karla. The likes of Wide Awake, Live At Leeds in the Park and 2000trees will be hosting Sprints’ frantic live show, before heading further afield to Germany’s Deichbrand and Holland’s Pinkpop, the latter of which finds itself headlined by Justin Timberlake, Olivia Rodrigo and Muse.
Karla’s personal crown jewel, however, is Glastonbury – where the band will return to play Woodsies after conquering its Leftfield stage in 2024. “We’re doing a televised slot, which is a massive moment in any band’s career,” she beams. “We’ve really wanted that for a long time, and we’re so honoured to be part of Woodsies. It was such a magical experience last time.”
“I hate myself when I say it, but I do have the itch again — when are we back on the road?”
— Karla Chubb
Be it their last-minute call-up to the main stage at a muddy, waterlogged Bearded Theory (“There’s some curse on Sprints – it’s either 30 degrees or lashing, and there’s no in between”) or the Guinness stage’s crowd that seemed to never stop growing at All Together Now at home in Ireland, Sprints’ festival tally is already crammed with highlights. In 2025, you get the sense that there are many more memories still to be created.
For example, Iggy Pop has hand-picked the group to support him at Dublin all-dayer In The Meadows, a bucket list moment for Karla, who was blown away by his set at All Together Now in 2023. “I grew up listening to The Stooges,” she says. “The Stooges and Iggy Pop, they were constant reference points for Sprints. To share a stage [with him], I don’t think it’s hit us yet, but I think I might die.”
While Karla counts Confidence Man’s euphoric, sun-soaked Other Stage set at last year’s Glastonbury as one of her all-time favourites, Savages at Electric Picnic also holds a special place for the band at large. “That’s a gig that me, Jack and Colm [O’Reilly, former guitarist] went to, and we were like, ‘This is the music we want to make. Why aren’t we making music like that?’ That kind of became the birth of Sprints, so that set definitely stuck with me a lot.”
Fast forward to the present day, and things look very different for Sprints. Having navigated changes in the band – where Zac replaced Colm – and their personal lives, the sentiment around throwing themselves back into another festival season comes with an increased sense of responsibility.
“We’re definitely professionals now, and we try to treat it as such,” begins Karla. “We’ve given up our day jobs to pursue this full-time, and so we’re very much treating it like a job, which sounds so un-rock‘n’roll! We have accountants, we’re looking to set up pension plans and all that boring adult shit…
“Quite frankly, [it’s about] cutting out a lot of the drinking and late nights, because we are in it for the long run. We want to go to all these festivals, have fun and see as many bands as possible, and that’s impossible to do if you’re absolutely sloshed and hungover every day. It’s about enjoying it and being present in all the moments that we’re very fortunate to have.”
“There’s some influences in our new material that are very suited to the summertime vibe.”
— Karla Chubb
With rehearsals already underway for Sprints’ 2025 festivals, a sprinkling of new music from the much-anticipated successor to ‘Letter To Self’ will make its way into the setlist, Karla confirms. “Road testing has always been a massive part of our band, as a way to gauge what works and what doesn’t work,” she reiterates. “You could call it slower in some aspects, but it’s definitely heavy, and there’s some influences in our new material that are very suited to the summertime vibe.”
Remaining tight-lipped on when these recorded tunes might see the light of day, Karla reveals the band know the exact song with which they will announce their next chapter, whenever that may be. “It’s a glimpse into the next elevation of the Sprints sound… people have been describing it as mature. We want to reward people that are fans of the sound already, but definitely introduce some new touches.
“The world that we’re stepping into is very much inspired by this dystopian reality we seem to be living in right now, but it’s quite hopeful. Despite how fucking bizarre everything is, we’ve managed to survive everything together, and all we want to do is go out and play music. I feel like it’s a little bit of a renaissance.”
As featured in the Festival Guide 2025 issue of DIY, out now.
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