UniLifeMag Chats to Two Door Cinema Club

Christie Legedza

With an incredibly full tour schedule that covers nearly all corners of the globe, it’s no surprise Alex Trimble, singer from Two Door Cinema Club, is feeling slightly under the weather.

“I’m pretty hungover, but I’m fine. It’s alright, I’ll get some sleep soon.”

It’s the morning after playing the iTunes festival in London with fellow Splendour in the Grass act FOALS, but he’s still surprisingly enthusiastic about it.

“It was amazing. Foals are one of our favourite bands, so it was really cool to play with them. It’s really good fun.”

He also mentioned their largest gig a few weeks before at the seminal British music festival Glastonbury.

“We were told it was to about 15,000. I’m not entirely sure, but it was pretty mental.”

The Irish trio have recently become festival staples around the world, with Australia’s own Splendour in the Grass being one of an ever-increasing list.

“We’re all pretty excited about it,” he says, but admits to not knowing a lot about it, apart from the camping.

“I’ve heard bits and pieces, but I’m not too familiar with it. We’re doing so many festivals it’s kind of hard to keep track of who’s playing where. I think there’s a tent there for us though. I’m not a big fan of camping, it’s just so dirty and you never get any sleep.”

He might not be familiar with the festival, but he certainly is familiar with their Australian fan base.

“It’s been kind of overwhelming to see the response. We’ve always got a message now and again from Australian fans saying like, ‘we love the music’, and we’ve had that for a while now so it’s all kind of been building up.”

I asked whether they’d get a chance to do the tourist favourite and touch a koala, but he didn’t sound too optimistic.

“I hope we do, but I guess it’s going to be pretty full on. We spend so much time getting ready for the show that we normally don’t get a lot of time to go round and see stuff”

I assured him he wouldn’t be missing much in Adelaide (their first stop on their Australian tour) and asked whether his hometown of Bangor was the same.

“It’s a fairly average, small town … there’s not much going on down there. There’s a cinema, some shops and some houses and that’s about it.”

That cinema, funnily enough, was the inspiration behind their name.

“It was called the Tudor Cinema, and Sam just mispronounced it as ‘two door’ and it just kind of stuck.”

It’s been a fairly rapid rise to the big time for the trio, who say they ‘took things easy’, although that might be a matter of perception.

“We just worked as hard as we possibly could and toured as much as we could. We put a hundred percent of our energy into it to try and make it work and I guess it’s starting to pay off. It’s really cool to see that happening.”

It certainly starts to pay off when you tour with your musical idols as they did, touring with French pop heavyweights Phoenix earlier this year.

“That was kind of like a dream come true because they’ve kind of been heroes of ours for a while now, so it’s always amazing when you get to tour with a band you love. You kind of get to come under their wing a little bit and learn from them.”

He then hinted at some potential new material.

“I’m in a van on the way to a studio in Wales which we’ve got for the week, so we’re going to go out there and spend a few days writing some songs and demoing.”

I asked whether we’d get to hear it, but he wasn’t giving anything away.

“We might do that. If it’s ready we will.”