Interviews Hard Life: “What artist is afforded the luxury of starting again this late in their career?”

‘Tears’ is the band’s first single since becoming Hard Life, does it feel liberating to have a clean slate?

It’s been a crazy few months with lots of ups and downs but, in hindsight, it feels great! What artist is afforded the luxury of starting again this late in their career? It really does feel like a clean slate and it’s rekindled the love of what I do. I was doing Easy Life for eight years and it was very familiar; I loved it but I almost took it for granted. Then all of a sudden, it was threatened to be taken away from us. So when we came back as Hard Life I realised how special and sacred it is to me because it could be over at any time. I’m ready to go and I’m inspired all the time which is rare because I can go through months of feeling fed up with music, but it hasn’t happened for a while.

Seeing how the fans rallied together must have really put everything in perspective too?

There were definitely times over the last nine months where the band thought about not coming back. And every time, it was the fans that pulled us up and made us realise that we have to keep going. They have always been dedicated and loyal, but this was a test for all of us and they pulled through. We owe it to them.

And if there’s any silver lining, this has been great free advertising…

There’s so many silver linings. We’ve reached a whole new audience. I still get messages to this day saying, ‘I’ve never heard of your band but keep going and fight the power!’ It’s almost like we’re the underdogs and that’s how it felt like when we were first making music. We were from Leicester and making alternative music which didn’t necessarily fit in a genre – it felt like we were paving our own way and it feels that way again.

Tell us more about the sample in ‘Tears’, and how your approach to songwriting has been changing?

With our old music, I was always very interested in sampling, but usually more drum breaks and individual sounds. A friend introduced me to Natalie Bergman, whose sample it is, and as soon as I heard this particular song I illegally downloaded it, sped it up, put it in Logic and it had to be a Hard Life song. I’ve since spoken to Natalie and cleared the song though, so it’s all above board!

There’s a great line that goes: “I drink plant-based milk, it’s a gateway drug / But there’s no use crying over oat milk.” What’s your lyrical process currently?

I’m always writing notes on my phone whether I’m on long journeys or if I’m bored. Some people doom scroll on social media; my equivalent is doom scrolling through my notes. It’s often a stream of consciousness and I let it flow. Although it’s not observational I try to make it a narrative. With ‘Tears’, the lyrics came straight away and it was like a little time capsule. Those are the best ones for me and they always feel the most raw and real.

And can we expect a debut Hard Life album any time soon?

One thing that this whole process has taught me is to not look too far in advance. I’m writing music and I don’t really know. I suppose there will be an album at some point, but I don’t know when that’ll be as it’s only recently that I’ve started going back to the studio and writing. I took a massive break from music because most of my day was full of boring legal stuff – now I’m just writing and seeing where it goes.

Tags: Features, Interviews, From The Magazine, Hard Life, July/​August 2024