The Maccabees prepare to play Reading 2015: “this festival has a place in my heart.”

Reading Festival has been The Maccabees’ stomping ground since they first started out. The band first cut their teeth on the small stages with fledgling bands, and now, ten years on, they’re airing ‘Marks To Prove It’ on the main stage. The band’s Felix White and Orlando Weeks swung by for a quick natter with DIY ahead of their set this afternoon, and they’re still on a high from that incredible number one album.

“It was a bit of a game for a week,” laughs Felix, looking back on The Maccabees’ good old fashioned charts battle; popping up around the country to play impromptu sets in record stores in a last minute push. “It’s only once in your life that something like that is ever going to happen,” he says, “so you have to try not to take it too seriously, and have a go at it. It came into focus when it happened that we’d had the same management and label, same agents, and everybody working with us for ten years. The amount of phone calls on the day, and how happy it made so many people,” he beams.

Reading is a festival close to The Maccabees, and so their set today feels like a bit of a ‘moment’ “I do feel like its been a really good benchmark festival for us, says Orlando. “We’ve really gone through the ranks, and it’s got a place in my heart.”

“We were first on the new bands stage the first time we did this,” Felix says, “but things - this area - never changes. Every two or three years when you come back you realise how much you’ve changed.” Felix suddenly clocks a bar that isn’t in the place he thought it was. “The fuck!” he exclaims suddenly. “You can’t move that!”

“That’s thrown everything.” Orlando sighs. “There’ll be people stood, just looking at what once was. Change is important, though, isn’t it?”

Meanwhile Felix is doing some fairly unique stretching moves, and it turns out it’s a coping mechanism for pre-set jitters. ”It’s the management of adrenaline,” Orlando informs us. “I do think adrenaline makes your body contort in weird ways,” Felix agrees. “I keep folding my body further into myself,” Orlando explains, “but Fe likes to really extend.”

‘Marks To Prove It,’ they agree, has already come into its own on stage, and for Orlando especially, it gives him more space to focus on huge moments like today. “The changes we’re making suit my slightly Luddite brain,” he smiles. “Now, this is all about how we make this moment feel good.”