White Lies, the most promising British band of the year, brought its debut album, To Lose My Life, to the Sziget. We caught up with bassist cum lyricist Charles Cave before the gig.

"Trying to slice a huge piece of Cheddar with a plastic knife, Charles smiles contentedly. “We always ask for Cheddar, but we never get the proper stuff,” says the bassist as he successfully cuts a piece of cheese while explaining the unexpected success of the band. “I think the reason why we made it, was because we got out of London as fast as possible,” he asserts. The group’s first show was in London, then the second wasn’t even in England but “somewhere in Europe”. However, he believes the first show in London had a huge impact. “I don’t know how but a lot of record label people turned up. We don’t know how it happened, we just put a few of our songs on the internet, but we didn’t tell anyone about it and we just kind of did it for fun,” recalls Charles. “We actually had some grand plan for how we were going to get our music out. But all we did was to just upload our songs and sat on our sofa, waited and made more music. I remember when we were recording a demo of ‘Death’ and the only thing we had put up was ‘Unfinished Business’, we were getting phone calls from record label people, from lawyers, from random people telling us that we got your number from this and that person and wanted to talk about coming to meet us. You know I had to turn my phone off. It was very strange.”

So people heard your songs and then at once you had a huge fan base at your first ever gig?

“We booked a show for four months ahead, and in the meantime we just wanted to rehearse. We thought we were going to have four months when nobody would know about us, but people started talking about the demo.”  When they signed their record contract, they only had six songs so they still had to write four or five songs. “What the record company said was: ‘We think you should make the record now, and if you make it and are happy with it then you should go on tour. You do not have to release it for a bit, but at least it’s finished.’ And that was the best decision we ever made. We finished it in June and we didn’t release it for six months but toured the whole world playing the songs for people who were waiting for the album to be released.” Their success surprised themselves just as much as their families and friends. “It took my parents a while to understand. They’d basically seen our struggle for six years, seen us learn to play then seen us being very desperate but still keep playing and writing. I was telling my father it was going well, people like our songs and I just think he didn’t exactly understand. He didn’t want to be too excited about it. He came to our first show. It was a very emotional show and a lot of people were crying. It was almost like if that had been the end, it would’ve been alright.” Although they are often compared to Interpol and the Editors, they are not really fascinated by the comparison. “We really like Interpol, they are a great band. The Editors we never really listened to though we might have caught a few songs on the radio. I think we’ve were never really bothered about the comparison that much as to check them out.” Charles’ major influence was Paul Simon and Talking Heads. “My major influence was Paul Simon, I think. He was my favourite artist from when I was very young. I always took my father’s tape from the car to the house and played it on my player. The Talking Heads as well. My father had a huge influence on the music I listened to when I was growing up.” Even though some people might be anticipating new material from them, they are not working on new songs right now. “We find it very hard to write when we are on tour, so we’re not writing songs for the new album yet. We finish our tour in September, then probably we’ll start working on it. I don’t feel any pressure from anyone except from myself.” Charles, who wanted to study drama, then creative writing but had to postpone his academic studies for White Lies, writes the lyrics. “I write the lyrics first then we put the melody around them. I get inspiration from anything, mainly from interacting with other people. It’s a very personal thing as well. And the problem about being an artist is that you always hate yourself, thinking that you should be better. The ultimate goal is to keep doing it. What you’re doing is the representation of who you are.”

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