Envy & Other Sins: 'It's All About The Music, Man'

Gigwise caught up with the winners of T4’s MobileAct Unsigned, Envy & Other Sins, for a chat ahead of the release of their debut album next month, and the band told us that their main concern is making great music, rather than the stigmas people will inevitably attach to them.

Despite winning a TV talent show, keyboardist and voice-piece of the Birmingham four-piece, Jarvey, maintains that there’s nothing contrived about Envy & Other Sins - and there never will be.

Explaining his point, Jarvey spouted: “There’s two types of band: there’s the one that looks at who’s been successful in the past and goes ‘right, that’s what I’m gonna do’, and there’s the band that looks at who’s just been signed and goes ‘that’s what we need to do because we need to get signed and that’s the whole point of being in a band’. It’s not.

“You’re not in a band to get a deal; it’s an incidental thing that you need to be able to do it all the time. But it’s not the be all and end all to being in a band – making music is.”

Later, Jarvey made it further explicit that they’re much more than simply a lucky band who won a competition: “We want to make it clear that we’ve been a band for a lot longer that we’ve been on TV, and that the songs weren’t written on the TV show.

“Though it is quite interesting, it’s an unusual way for things to have happened.”

He continued: “There’s this mentality that the industry’s evil anyway, and if you’re struggling and working away as an unsigned band, all you want is just to not have to do that day job stuff. And that’s what the record label’s doing for us.

“So the fact that we happened to get there via the TV show didn’t really make a great deal of difference. And we’ve got the same issues and worries about record labels as anyone who reads Gigwise… at the end of the day, how else can it be?”

Check back to Gigwise tomorrow for the full interview with the band.