Bristol-based pop-punkers Hightail are fresh onto the scene, with the recent release of their debut single ‘Made a Mess’. We had a chat with Lead Vocalist Jordan Veale about the single, their upcoming EP and where they hope it takes them.

So you just released your debut single, and you have an EP on the way?

Yeah, the release date is still to be announced but it’s pretty soon!

What would you say the theme of the EP is?

It’s like — love songs and self-hatred. Well, not quite hatred, more like insecurity? I sort of see it in my head as insecurity on steroids! There’s a lot of self-doubt, I’m very self doubtful and it’s not positive, but I deal with it by writing songs and there’s a lot of that on the EP.

How are you feeling about it coming out?

Excited and nervous! We’ve been working on it for about a year and a half so, on the one hand, I’m really excited to finally get it out so we can play it all and get ready for new stuff — we have a lot planned, we’re already finding a vibe for EP 2 — but also really nervous, because of that self-doubt again in my head like, what if nobody likes it? What if nobody comes out to shows? It’s very nerve-wracking, but I’m excited.

So, it all starts with the debut single, what is ‘Made a Mess’ about?

Well, the first verse is about an ex that I had, and it just transcended into missing the times I had with her. It can be applied to friendships as well, everyone has those friends that you’ve just fallen out of touch with, you start to reminisce about good times and how much you’d kill to have them back – nostalgia, basically.

How was the writing process for ‘Made a Mess’?

We were actually a completely different band when it was written! It was me and our lead guitarist in our first band together back in 2016, and it just evolved through our next project. It was one of those ones that took little time to write, it just flew out.

Were there any tracks that you struggled to write?

There are two tracks from the EP – ‘Sick’ and ‘Not Another Love Song’, I rewrote both maybe six or seven times — It was so hard, I thought it made sense and suddenly it looked like another language!

You guys are from Bristol, there’s a cool music scene there, what’s that like?

Yeah, it’s cool! But what I’ve noticed is the pop-punk scene is not as big as it used to be, which is a shame. There were so many good pop-punk bands from Bristol, but a lot of them broke up or moved onto other things. But I have noticed it’s started to come back up again!

You said you were excited about the future, what are you gonna do after the EP, any big plans?

I think our main plan is just to get our name out there! We’ve got some exciting things in the very near future that I don’t think I can talk about yet that link in with the EP cycle that hopefully will impact us in a very positive way. We wanna break out of Bristol, play other cities and festivals and just build our fanbase!