Twin Atlantic Craig Kneale

Twin Atlantic are currently playing their largest headlining tour and are killing it every night. We had a chat with drummer Craig Kneale in Manchester shortly before they took to the stage for their biggest ever headline show.


Music News: 2012 has been a busy year for the band and you’ve consistently been playing sold out shows, how has it been for you?

Craig Kneale: Yeah it’s been really exciting. We started off the year on a bit of a high just from how well the album had done last year so it’s kind of crazy that’s it grown so much this year. At the end of last year we were selling out 500 capacity rooms apart from in Scotland, then we did the tour in April which was to 2000 people a night, it’s crazy but really exciting.


MN: How is the tour going so far?

CK: It going great so far! We’re still in the first half of it but it’s going amazing, we’re really enjoying it. It’s been really exciting playing these venues. 


MN: Charlie Simpson is supporting you on this tour, what’s it like having such a big name tour with you?

CK: It’s really quite surreal, obviously everyone knows Busted and Fightstar so it’s really cool and he’s a really nice guy. It’s just good to have someone that you like supporting you.


MN: With it being such a busy year do you plan on taking a break for a bit or dive straight into your new album?

CK: Basically when this tour finishes we might be going back over to America for a couple of weeks in November to play some shows but also to write. I think our goal is to start recording the album at the start of January, that’s what we’d love to do to .


MN: The band played Warped Tour in America earlier this year, how did it go?

CK: I really liked it, Warped Tour kind of felt like a big holiday because we were on a bus. It would have been really hard to do if we were in a van because we’d have to stay around all day and then drive overnight to get to the next place. We were quite lucky and had the bus. We only had to play for half an hour a day and you don’t know when your set is going to be so it was really good fun and quite easy. It was nice to spend the summer in the sun.


MN: A remix of your track ‘Free’ was used during the coverage of Felix Baumgartner’s recording breaking jump from the edge of the Earth, was it cool to be part of such a big event?

CK: It was kind of surreal really and cool to have our music used for something culturally significant rather than just it being used in an advert which is still pretty cool. We got asked about it a while back but I don’t think any of us actually realised how big it would be. So yeah it was cool and it was nice exposure but I think for us it was just cool to be involved in something that people will talk about for years to come.


MN: If you were to choose a song to soundtrack your own jump from the edge of the world what would you choose?

CK: Err maybe just to be very literal I’d probably choose something like Free Fallin’ by Tom Petty. You can’t really take anything else away from that song apart from literally free falling.


MN: Twin Atlantic were part of Radio One’s Rock Week recently, what was it like being part of that and recording in Maida Vale?

CK: It was amazing, we’ve done a couple of sessions at Maida Vale before but it’s always been in Studio 4, this was our first time in Studio 2 which is the more famous one where The Beatles did a lot of their recordings. It was just cool to be a part of it and be recognised as a band that is doing quite well in the UK now.


MN: What have been the biggest changes you’ve had to face between first starting out as a band and now?

CK: I think the biggest change we’ve had to deal with is realising to let go a little bit more, when we started off we wanted to do everything from our own artwork to things like t shirt designs. So the biggest change has been letting go of responsibility and concentrating on the music a little bit more. I think our passion is still the same and we’re still as thirsty to take it to the next step but we’ve learned to relax a bit more. There’s the more obvious thing of people actually coming to watch us play though. You get a lot more recognition and things but for us personally we still just think of music as the same and our favourite part of being a band is getting to write songs together and play them in front of people. 


MN: If you could change anything that you have done as a band would you? Or would you have done everything the same?

CK: I don’t think we’d change anything, there have obviously been decisions we’ve kind of regretted but I think we needed to make them all to know that they weren’t the right things. I wouldn’t change anything because this for all 4 of us has been the first band that’s gone anywhere so it’s been a big learning curve but we love it. There are parts where we want to punch each other and split up when we’re stuck in Exeter with a broken down van after playing to like one person but eventually we look back on those parts and realise it was actually pretty cool to be able to do these things.


MN: What’s been your highlight of 2012?

CK: Erm maybe playing the festivals over the summer like T in the Park and Reading & Leeds, they were massive for us. It was a shock because we thought that the tents would be half filled but they were full so even that alone was really cool. There have been so many great headline shows this year and we got to travel so I don’t think I’d be able to pick one highlight. Reading & Leeds actually were pretty special because for us personally showed us how far we’d come over the past year or so.


Twin Atlantic are currently touring the UK with Charlie Simpson and Dead Sara