Interview – Sunflower Thieves – Breaking Glass Magazine

Following the release of their striking new EP Same Blood, we caught up with Amy & Lily from Sunflower Thieves to find out more about its making, the meaning behind the songs, and the flourishing Leeds music scene…

How are you doing? For anyone unfamiliar with Sunflower Thieves could you give us a quick intro?

Amy: Hey! Good thank you – tired from touring but feeling nice and warm inside, and taking a little rest before we head out across Europe! We are Sunflower Thieves – Amy and Lily. We’re an alt-indie band based in Leeds, for fans of Phoebe Bridgers, Boygenius, Flyte and Angie McMahon. We just released our second EP Same Blood on October 30th, you can listen to it everywhere!

You’ve stayed together longer than a lot of bands manage – what keeps it interesting for you?

Lily: We’ve never known any different and it keeps on getting more fun! We feel really lucky that things just keep progressing for us. We’ve worked so hard for a long time, so it’s really rewarding when things go well and we’re really enjoying this progression at the moment. We’ve grown up together, and we know each other so well, but also the more time goes on, the more people believe in us and support, so we’re slowly building a team around us of wonderful people. I think having always been so involved in the management and development of our own project means we always get to explore creativity and adapt in every element of it.

Your new EP Same Blood highlights the importance of long-term friendships, how autobiographical is it as a piece of work?

Lily: The most autobiographical we’ve ever been. We always write from lived experience and this EP is no different, but is definitely more lyrically direct and honest than we’ve been previously. Every writing session turns into a therapy session and brings us closer to each other and our shared vision.
Amy: We’ve realised that friendships aren’t as commonly written about, perhaps because they’re often much less dramatic and fluctuating than romantic relationships, but it’s something so integral to our project, and to our lives in general. Our friends, collaborators and wider creative community are so so important to us, that it feels like a natural subject for us to explore in our music. Same Blood in particular, as a song, wasn’t something we ever knew we needed to write until we did, and it feels like the Sunflower Thieves song.

And what do you feel has impacted on how your music has evolved to reach this point?

Amy: The growth of the alternative/indie genre has definitely impacted us and our music. As an artist, you get asked a lot in interviews and during distribution or applications, what genre[s] you are, and it can be such a hard question to answer when you blend elements from different sonic spaces. But that’s what makes the Sunflower Thieves sound what it is, and moving forward with that confidently has allowed us to create music we’re really proud of, rather than trying to stick to a lane and restricting our creative freedom. Lily’s production develops with each song we write and I think our growing confidence in being more honest and direct in our lyrics has allowed us to approach writing more freely.
Lily: It’s so easy to get inspired when there’s great music coming out. At the moment, we’re loving Katie Gavin’s album, Julia Jacklin, Jemima Coulter. We also now play live with three brilliant musicians, Nathan Apps, Chris Aitchison and Jo Meikle, and have been able to incorporate them into some of the new recording processes, including the vinyl-exclusive track on the record, Already Taken, which shaped how that song is now, both recorded and live. They’ve been wonderful in helping us to capture the recorded sound of the songs we’ve already released, in a live space, and we’re excited to do more of this with them going forwards!

Can you tell us a bit about a couple of the songs on the EP and the stories behind them?

Lily: The first verse of Driving Lessons came after my first therapy session, sparked by the ‘how was your childhood?’ question, which became a lot to process. Together with Ev [Pet Snake/Clean Cut Kid], we chatted through the experience and the panic mode it incited, and realised that had stemmed from current anxiety. I was having driving lessons at the time, and having a hard time with the instructor, and this felt like an interesting representation of becoming an adult, still learning and wanting to avoid confronting hard things.
Amy: So Far So Good came from a couple of notes I had on my phone, one about a church near my parents’ house in lockdown, which encouraged people to email them their prayers whilst they couldn’t physically attend services. The other was about a friend who had told me she thought she was going to die young, because her mum had, and I spent a lot of time thinking about this. The song became a commentary on the human need for connection, and feelings of insignificance and loneliness in the wider world.
Amy: West Park Drive is super special to me. It was the first song I had written in quite a while, and came falling out on a writing trip with friends in Sweden. It was the first time in a long time that I’d felt entirely calm and relaxed, and able to create. It’s a song about falling in love with someone day-to-day, and realising that although you know them so intimately within your little bubble at home, there is so much more to learn about the bigger picture of them as a person.‘Half way house, feels like home, half way house, are you with me?’ is me leaning into feeling entirely comfortable with that person, without us having acknowledged yet where it’s leading.

You’ve just completed a string of live dates around the UK – any stand out moments?

Amy: We did our own short run of UK dates in early September with the band and it was so much fun – we did our first Brudenell headline show to finish it off, which felt like a real milestone. Brude and the team there have been integral to our live development, and it’s our favourite Leeds haunt. This month we’ve supported Dan Croll around the UK, just the two of us. It was really lovely getting to spend proper quality time together, both in the car driving up and down the country, and in all the different cities. We played too and met some lovely audiences, and it was a really nice opportunity to get the new record out to new listeners pre-release.
Lily: Our favourite shows were probably Nottingham – the Bodega was a huge part of us first starting out playing live shows, and we always feel like we’re coming home there – and Edinburgh, because we love the city and the crowd were so supportive and engaged.

Did you get to see much of any of the places you were playing?

Lily: More than we thought we would actually! We had a lovely sunshiney wander through Winchester the morning after the Southampton show, and a fun morning in Sheffield exploring the charity shops and cafes. We stayed with friends and family across the tour, so we got some extra quality time with some of them throughout, which really made a difference.

The music scene in Leeds seems really strong at the moment, are there any particular venues, other artists or people working behind the scenes you’d like to give a shout out to?

Amy: Yeah there’s loads of exciting stuff coming out of Leeds right now. We’re loving The Howl & The Hum’s new album of course, and Marnie Glum, who supported us on our headline tour, has just released three incredible songs. Our friend Sam, who we wrote some of the first EP songs with, is launching a new project, The Luca, and we’ve recently sung some backing vocals for a couple of his tunes. Otherwise, I co-run a newly relaunched venue, The Attic, near the city centre, and we’re putting on a really exciting range of events: gigs, workshops, film screenings, recitals, supper clubs, life drawing, you name it!
Lily: I’d also love to shout out the programme I’m running at Come Play With Me called ‘Come Platform Me: Introduction to Sound’! It’s a programme for people from marginalised backgrounds who want to get into live or studio sound engineering. The third round is about to start in collaboration with the wonderful Hyde Park Book Club and Eiger Studios and I’m buzzing for it!

What was either the last book you read or last film you watched (or both!)?

Amy: We listened to a great audiobook in the car together on our drive back to Leeds after the Hollow Coves support shows we did at the end of September. It’s called Strong Female Character and it’s by Fern Brady. She voices the audiobook – she’s absolutely amazing, and it’s hilarious and heartfelt and sad in all the best ways.
Lily: The last film we watched together was Kinds of Kindness… I think it’s exploring controland sacrifice, with a lot of dark humour. We were both very overwhelmed when we left the cinema haha – we’d love to hear other people’s takes on it!

And lastly, after your European dates, what’s the plan for 2025?

Amy: We have a couple of new songs ready to go which feel SO exciting off the back of the EP, and a headline show announced for London in April, tickets on sale here. More to be announced soon x