The pandemic left the music scene shattered but the live industry slowly started to recover again during the summer of 2022, and Hamburg alt-rock two-piece Kill Strings released their debut album just at the right time. Limbo was released in September last year and the band set off to play support slots for several international acts across Germany during the year.

Since we met the band four years ago, a lot has happened. Above all, Kill Strings transformed from being a four-piece to only being Julian Lee and David Schmidt – but for the better. In fact, the band’s approach to songwriting and communication has never been easier.

We sat down with Lee and David in their studio in Hamburg and chat about their amazing touring year last year, writing music for the next album, and the struggle to reach out to an audience as a new and upcoming band on the tour.

Full throttle into 2022

Last year you finally released your debut album Limbo after a lot of hard work and you did lots of support shows across Germany, and even a few gigs in the UK. It must have been the best way to return after the pandemic, going full throttle into 2022.
It was mind-blowing! It’s hard to believe how fantastic last year was for us, just an amazing adventure. But it came with loads of stress and we didn’t really fully enjoy what we were doing until quite recently. It’s when we sit here [in the studio] and work on new music that we realize what actually happened. We were constantly working on something – social media, marketing, and music videos – and we didn’t have time to reflect on what we were doing when it actually happened.

When you look back at 2022 it must also have been an amazing year in terms of promotion and exposure.
Yeah, that was kind of awesome. Cleopatrick asked us to support them but we didn’t really expect them to ask us, that was quite a surprise. We’ve listened to their music for a very long time, so it was big for us because we hadn’t supported bigger bands before, and Cleopatrick are quite popular in Germany. Just look at all the people at Molotow [venue in Hamburg], it was packed.

Then New Model Army turned up with an offer, and although it’s not our generation of music they are really big and probably the last surviving rock stars out there. Just imagine a band where everyone is way past their peak and probably ready for retirement, and they tour for three to four months straight with no breaks and drink loads of beer at every show they play. And then just sleep it off in their nightliner and wake up the next day to restart the whole procedure (laugh). That’s what we call “the full rock star experience” (laugh). We couldn’t keep up with them at all. It was hard enough to do four shows with them, we were done after two (laugh).

After that, we supported The Amazons, and they’re probably the friendliest band we’ve ever met, really great guys. You don’t expect the headliner band to hang out with you but The Amazons sat down and small talked, that’s quite unusual.

We also got lots of airtime on Kerrang radio in the UK which was huge, and they kept playing us for eight weeks. But in Germany, nothing happened, just complete silence. You know, after getting really good reviews in the international press, and with the airtime on Kerrang radio, you would think it would be an easy road to walk. But it just stopped and we were thinking “What happened?”, it didn’t make sense to us. But it’s all about the timing, knowing the right people and all the other stuff around you, like how well you do on social media and that kind of crap, and that’s not how we work or want to work.

Our label forced us to start a TikTok account which may not be what we really wanted, but many bands have taken off after getting a following on TikTok, and not only bigger bands. Well, it didn’t happen for us (laugh). We’re not really the type of people who would pick up the phone during a break in the studio and just talk about something or, even worse, start dancing like most people do on TikTok. If you ask us, you don’t want to know everything about your favorite band because it demystifies bands and makes them less interesting. Or maybe we’re wrong (laugh).

Working on the sophomore album

After an intense year of touring Limbo, it’s back to reality in the studio and restarting the process of working on the next album.

But it’s a difficult proposition for any band to pull off the second album, particularly for a band that has found immediate success with their debut and are under immense pressure to record and release a follow-up before the hype disappears. The curse of the second album can be a very real thing.

However, on the back of new influences from the bands they supported, and their hard work on finding new ways to write music, Kill Strings have started to explore new avenues in their songwriting, and the author of this interview can vouch for that the new songs are stunning. They just need to convince their label about it.

It’s not yet a year since the release of Limbo but I guess the label wants you to get something out quite soon again to ride the hype. You’re also in the second album syndrome phase when you have to come up with new songs but don’t get lots of time to do it. Do you feel any pressure right now?
We’re working on it right now and have a few songs ready and the next step is to convince our label about their awesomeness as well (laugh), they don’t feel the same passion for these new songs as we do. Yet!

But we do enjoy it at the moment because we’re not under any pressure to release a new album soon, there’s no deadline, at least not what we know of. And we’ll let it take time because we’re in the process of finding out new ways how to write music. It has always been a challenge for us to write enough songs for our EP’s or the album. So right now it’s about learning a new method for songwriting.

It’s relaxing to not have any pressure, but at the same time we feel a bit of stress because we don’t know what will happen with our label and if MNRK wants to continue working with us. If they don’t want to release the next album we need to wait a few years to do it because of the contract, and then we’re fucked (laugh).

We have two optional albums left on MNRK, and in the deal they have one and a half years after the debut album to decide whether they’re going to release the next one or not. And right now we need to write new music which they hopefully will like. But we have some great new songs on the way that we think will convince them to continue with us.

I know you found the time to finish Limbo because of the pandemic. Is that a problem now when you have to be at an office to work in the daytime and then find time to meet up here?
It feels like we have more time now, especially me because I [David] don’t work full-time anymore and have a lot more time to spend here. And this is a job on its own. We can spend hours in here just jamming and see what comes out of it, and that’s time we didn’t have before.

We didn’t have that many songs when the pandemic arrived, and then our third band member dropped out and we actually didn’t know if we wanted to continue on our own. But we decided, “Let’s meet up for rehearsals and see what happens”, and it just clicked between us and we wrote a few songs.

It’s also a much better workflow today when we know what we want to do and have the experience on how to do it, especially a different approach to how to write music. It was harder when we had more band members and never really got time for being more than band members. When we wrote Limbo just the two of us, we had lots of time to reflect on the music and on ourselves and work on our relationship as a band, and that had a huge impact on the band and the music. All bands need therapeutic sessions (laugh), look at Metallica.

Do the new songs continue in the same direction as on the first album with influences from, for instance, Biffy Clyro and Muse?
It would be boring to do exactly the same thing again. We definitely know more about what we’re doing now than on the first album and it will be a bit more streamlined. We’re not saying that we write music to get airtime but we know what works out to get picked up by radio and to end up on playlists on Spotify, and that’s important. At least it’s in the back of our heads when we write new music.

But we also got new influences last year, and it goes directly into what we write today. Cleopatrick, The Amazons, New Model Army, and Deaf Havana are important for our songwriting right now. It was the same with Limbo, it was born out of the experiences we had at the time we worked on it. We still listen to the same type of music today but we listen to a lot more music and explore new avenues, and that has an impact on our songwriting. Let’s say that the essence of our first album will be the same on the next one.

People also say that we sound a bit like Depeche Mode but we don’t know what they hear because we can’t hear any Depeche Mode at all, and we have spent heaps of time listening to their music. Maybe it’s how we use synthesizers because I [Lee] can’t see how my singing is anything close to how the frontman of Depeche Mode does it. I can’t hear any resemblance at all, it must be the synthesizers (laugh). Maybe Depeche Mode are influenced by us (laugh).

You’ve also been through a lot of changes in the band since you started. When we did the interview with you in 2019 the fourth band member had just left the band, and today you’re only two left, save for your live shows when you bring in a third member on stage. How much has that affected how you write music?
It hasn’t really changed anything with fewer band members. Most of the songs were born out of our ideas anyway and the former band members just chipped in. We can’t really see the use of another band member right now because we have found a really good workflow in the studio, although it’s a little bit fragile at the moment as we, like we said, just have started learning new ways to write music.

Today we share the responsibility between us and it’s a lot easier to do it like that. It’s fewer distractions and less discussion on our direction, and that makes it a lot easier to work. It worked really well to write our first album and we can’t really see why we would change it.

Songwriting could be a bit toxic when we were four people. At times it was a really vicious attitude in the band and we could all be like “Your idea sounds like shit” or “Fuck that, it’s not good enough”, and that’s not really a healthy approach to songwriting. It’s so sensitive when you’re in the process of writing songs because you put so much of yourself into it, it’s your creativity at stake, and it often clashes with the egos of other band members.

We have evolved past those problems today after doing lots of reflection on what we’re doing and dealing with those types of problems directly if anything would arise, and that’s healthy for the band and our music.

The struggle to reach out 

2022 was a massive touring year and Kill Strings supported cleopatrick, Deaf Havanna, The Amazons, and legendary rock stars New Model Army on the back of their debut album. New bands need promotion and going on tour is a great way to spread your name outside the local scene and venues.

However, although Kill Strings pulled off an impressive tour schedule last year, the post-pandemic war-induced economic crisis has made it a lot harder to get support slots as even the most established bands find it hard to sell tickets. And there’s even a bigger problem to address: to get picked up by radio shows and get airtime. But Kill Strings won’t give up, they use the frustration to write the second album.

We started talking about touring; has the intense touring year last year led to even more support slots for you this year, and that you’re planning for more shows later during 2023?
Not at the moment. There has been lots of talking about supporting other bands but nothing has happened yet. Right now we’re at a point when we have released our debut album, done lots of support shows, and got some really great reviews, but we never got any airtime. Getting your music on the radio is important, and we didn’t get much coverage last year, and we’re not really sure about our label’s reaction to it.

But we’re also in the transition between booking agencies and that’s kind of a rough process because we need to find our place in the scene. It’s tough for new bands to get booked, and after the pandemic, it’s even harder because many booking agencies don’t want to work with new bands. It’s just too hard to sell tickets. Not even established bands sell tickets today.

Our experience is that bookers pick local bands for every show instead of having a band like us supporting a headliner for several shows. We played most of our support slots at home in Hamburg or the cities kind of close to Hamburg save for a few gigs, but getting booked for support slots in Munich or Hannover for instance won’t happen right now. You know, when bigger bands don’t sell enough tickets, why would a booking agency pick us for a tour?

But the reviews were good enough last year and we’re hoping to be on the FKP Scorpio roster soon. They have helped us out with shows already and we’re still on their radar. They booked us for the support slots to The Amazons in Berlin and Cologne and they know who we are, and we have been talking about other support slots although nothing is set.

Is your target a full German festival summer this year?
That would have been fantastic but it probably won’t happen this year because the album isn’t that hot anymore. It came out last year and we didn’t get as much airtime as we wanted or needed to get the attention from festivals. We’re probably not at any of the bigger festivals’ radars at the moment. Maybe a last minute booking (laugh). But it doesn’t bother us right now, it’s better for us to focus on our second album and get the process started and play some support shows, hopefully a lot during the fall.

What stressed us most when we released the album was that many bands released albums at the same time – it’s the post-pandemic effect – and all bands ended up on the backlog of FKP [the biggest festival organizer in Germany], and there wasn’t really any space left for unknown local bands.

But we’re not giving up. We’ll take that frustration and put it onto our next album and then we’ll try again (laugh).

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Photographer: Julia Schwendner

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Kill Strings pages

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