Bigsound Interview Series: Bugs

2018 has seen Bugs open Falls Festival for triple j Unearthed, the release of ‘Glue’, premiering on triple j’s Good Nights with back-to-back play on Home & Hosed. In April Bugs released their EP ‘Social Slump’ with a national tour, winning them sold out shows in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide & Wollongong.

Q: What advice would you give yourself when you first started?

A: Practice & play. You can never do it enough, and there will always be someone out there willing to work harder than you if you don’t. The music industry is great but it doesn’t owe you anything. Take care of your band mates + make sure you are having fun!

Q: What things have you learned and wish someone had told you?

A: I don’t think I would do anything over to be honest / ask for different advice. I’m a firm believer in the whole ‘you make mistakes to learn from them’ ethos and feel like every adversity and issue our music has overcome taught us a valuable lesson. Everyone makes mistakes.

Q: What are your goals in music?

A: Have fun, get better and make a positive difference / impact on the world by doing it. Pretty simple really.

Q: Where do you see your music fitting in on the Australian music scene?

A: I don’t really feel like it fits in anywhere at the moment, we have always been pretty independant and therefore have slowly grown a really nice organic following who are on board with what we are doing but somewhat outside of popular circles. So I guess I see us hanging out with them for the next few years because they’re like family.

Q: Who inspires you in music?

A: Too many people in the Brisbane community to name. Probably our manager Ruby the most to be honest. She is the most passionate, committed, hard working & beautiful person I have ever met and to work with / learn from her (& Dom) is a pretty huge honour. Love em like family, and even though they don’t play in bands they can relate to a lot of the struggles we go through because we are like minded people working in a sometimes tough industry. But yeah doing it with them motivates me to keep going so they are actually the biggest influence on me personally.