Interview
Interview
SNAYX: “We’ve always put playing in front of people ahead of streaming numbers”
The punk-leaning alt-rockers talk about joy as an act of resistance, and branching out to new directions
Every time you hit play, SNAYX exude a fierce energy, like they’re yearning to break out of the confines of your headphones and laptop speakers. But what they do even better is rule the stage – whether they’re touring with Royal Blood or headlining shows in the UK and Europe, with “the words coming back at you louder than you can sing them.”
During our chat, the band get particularly animated when recalling the madness of their last gig on their current UK tour. For the first time, they’re packing 15 songs into one set – ”the tip of the iceberg of what’s to come” – which play out amidst constant crowd-surfing from fans, with frontman Charlie Herridge randomly settling on the PA speaker, Ollie Horner unleashing riffs on someone’s shoulders and Elaina “Lainey” Loops juggling the drums and that bit of synth track that has brilliantly enhanced their raw-and-ready sound on recent releases.
“We’ve always been a live band first,” points Herridge, if there was ever any doubt. The pleasures and challenges of small-band touring, meanwhile, come into clear view. But it’s exactly these gigs that have afforded them headline shows further away from home, armed with just a few punk-driven tracks and the electronic diversions of their 2024 EP, Better Days. “I think you sometimes see bands with really good numbers through TikTok and streaming, but when it comes to live, they can’t get the crowd to actually turn up in person,” notes Herridge. From their gut-punching take on UK politics to bowing to the power of a massively supportive community, SNAYX lead by example in a changing industry.
Let’s go back to the beginning a bit. What was your initial vision for SNAYX?
Herridge: Ollie and I have been in bands for years. But we found that the other guys weren’t as interested. So we just wanted to set up something on the side just for fun. We came up with the idea for SNAYX. We would just pretend that we were a band, we didn’t really have any songs.
Horner: And then we got offered a gig and we were like, “we better write some songs”.
Herridge: Someone called our bluff! We started as a two-piece with a little drum machine thing. It worked in small venues. But when we started playing bigger shows we thought we needed to have a drummer. There’s some magic about having a drummer live, there’s lots of energy. And then we hit the jackpot and found Lainey here.
Lainey: I was living in Sheffield. It got to the point where I was on a train twice a week, up and down with all my drum gear. And then I had a job in each city and so I was commuting. Eventually I ended up just moving, I was like, “What’s the point of staying in Sheffield?”.
What is the strongest element that each of you brings to the band?
Lainey: Charlie brings the crosswords.
Herridge: That’s it, just the crosswords. Lainey’s always happy, really bubbly. She just sort of turns up and keeps everyone in a really good mood. Ollie’s the core of the sound. You pull the menacing faces.
Horner: The bass face.
On ‘Sink or Swim’ you sing: “It’s time for a change, But nothing ever seems to change”. Where would you like to see that change – and how do you see your role as motivators?
Herridge: People always want to see change in society and want things to get better. It doesn’t matter who’s in charge, nothing ever really gets better. We’d just like to see politicians being accountable and actually being proactive to make things happen. We’re still talking about the same things that we were talking about five years ago. Taxation issues with corporations. It’s all just people at the top getting away with stuff all the time. We just want things to be upfront and honest. It’s quite a nihilistic view, just a rant, a vent.
Another verse that stuck with me is on ‘Weaponized’: “Brothers and sisters are terrified. The future is unknown”.
Herridge: ‘Weaponized’ is such a big song for me lyrically. It was formed at that time when there was so much uncertainty. Brexit was happening, Trump was in office in the US, with North Korea, with Covid. So many things were all happening around the same time and no one really knew what was happening. And I felt like everyone had this overwhelming sort of dread, no one was feeling really positive about anything going forward. And everyone was fighting, especially in UK politics, with both sides of Brexit. It is one of those songs that I found really cathartic to write and express my own anxieties.
Politically charged music is making a comeback but with a twist. SNAYX are political, but also great fun, which might even be more effective.
Herridge: You are right. There’s a lot of passion and fire behind it, but everyone is there for a good time. It’s really well-meaning. When people come to shows they want to vent about [politics], they want that release, that moment where they can get it out of their system. And we want people to have fun when they come to our show. We all have the same ideals, it’s that communal sort of release of frustrations, and everyone’s just there bouncing together and having a great time.
Horner: I like being shouted at!
Herridge: It’s joy as an act of resistance. When you show you’re happy in the face of it.
You have a loyal fanbase. Your merch even comes with a message that you support small makers. How has this sense of community helped you along the way?
Herridge: I think things have changed quite a lot in the industry. Bands are really supported by that community and you get back out of it tenfold what you put in. And they sort of lift you up even in your worst moments, they rally around you and they’re always so supportive. When we say we, we’ve not built it, they have built this community and we love to be a part of it with them. We used to see a lot of fan groups that were set up by the fans for the fans but the bands themselves didn’t have much input into it and we love being involved. We’re not going to dictate what it should be. I think it really bridges that gap between artist and and fan.
Horner: We see them at shows and they come to every gig.
Herridge: It’s so nice that we’ve got now custom fan-made merch as well, which we’re incorporating on our merch stands. Their designs are all sort of limited edition, it’s exciting. There’s a plan, it’s quite new, like a carbon offsetting scheme where, when things are bought, a tree will be planted in Gambia. It’s all, again, built through the ideas from our community and it’s them feeding back to us what they want to see and us working with them. And that’s how I think the modern world will probably move going forwards. Less big industry players, and more fans and communities.
You’ve toured with Billy Talent, played Download, and headlined shows across Europe. What’s your take on the current “cost-of-touring” crisis?
Herridge: I think it’s hard at pretty much every level. Everyone we speak to, in much bigger bands and smaller, struggles to make the costings work. For us, it has been a struggle at times, when we had things go wrong with the van, breaking down and putting a new engine in. You don’t see these sorts of costs, and we have to put in loans from our own money to cover things because [touring] just doesn’t make enough. Once we get out there, with the merch and the fans, it does sort of come back a little bit, but the line between being sustainable and making a huge loss is so thin. You go into every tour with that cloud hanging over you. You don’t even want to think about that really as an artist but it is sadly the kind of reality of the business.
You’ve had your share of van breakdowns…
We are very hardy to it now. I think if anything is going to go wrong for us, it probably will. The other day, when we broke down after Stockton, we pulled up by the side of the road. No one panicked. We just sat there and watched Match Of The Day, completely calm.
Horner: We’ve got snacks, drinks. We’re prepared.
Lainey: Blankets.
Herridge: It’s sort of part of the adventure when things go wrong.
What’s your highest and lowest point on the tour so far?
Herridge: Definitely, we’ve mentioned the v-a-n, that’s the low point.
Horner: I played around on someone’s shoulders last night.
Herridge: You didn’t miss a note, it was mad! And I was up on top of the PA system. You know when you look out and you see people in the crowd just smiling?! That’s what you want, people just going “What is going on?”. I always think that the best shows are when you’re just thinking: “I’ve just smiled the whole way through”. I get it all the time when I go to see bands like Lambrini Girls.
Talk to us a bit about your EP Better Days. You branched out to more electronic and alternative sounds. How do you see your sound evolving?
Herridge: Better Days gave us a lot more space to be creative and try some things that were a little bit more melodic and away from the early stuff that we’d been doing, which was a lot more punky and slightly heavier. It was a really nice change to have that freedom. It was nice to be like, “I know this is a bit different but there’s something to this”. And what we loved when we were in the studio is just putting that together. The songs themselves are exploring different aspects of what is SNAYX as a whole package. But we tied them all together with that sort of nostalgic feeling in those synths.
Is there a debut album along the way?
Herridge: So let’s just say that we’ve been busy and the next year will be the Year of the Snake in the Chinese calendar. Expect a lot from us.
Your recent cover of The Prodigy’s ‘Breathe’ is electrifying. Did you find the process intimidating?
Herridge: It was pretty natural! We’re such big fans of The Prodigy. Amazon approached us and said, “we want you to do a cover and put your own spin on it”. They did give us a lot of freedom. And we went back with a couple of songs and they just didn’t feel right. The Prodigy was the one we wanted to do but we were also most afraid to do, because if it doesn’t sound right, we’d be doing one of our favourite songs such an injustice. We were quite intimidated going out there, we self-produced it as well. I love being in the studio, you can get really experimental.
We’ve never had congas on track before. We were going through the percussion, there was a little bongo in the back and we were like ” Ah, maybe we can put this on”. The engineer was like, “I think there’s some big congas out in the hallway”. And we went and got them. I think it’s one of my favourite parts of that track when I hear the congas coming at the end.
What are some of the influences that people wouldn’t expect you to draw inspiration from?
Herridge: I really like old-school, 90s dance and trance. It’s something I listen to quite a lot, so I’m always trying to push in little bits of electronica myself. I don’t listen to anything other than Lana del Rey at the minute. I’ve just really been deep-diving everything. Even the newest stuff’s been really good.
Do you see Lana’s influence creeping into SNAYX albums?
Horner: I think in terms of production maybe.
Herridge: The production on the Ultraviolence album is incredible. Where the vocals stay so present, so crisp, the percussion. It’s not our sound, obviously, but how they achieved those sounds and those elements.
Horner: How could we bring that into our world sort of thing.
Do you produce everything yourselves or was The Prodigy cover a one-off?
Horner: The Prodigy was our first.
Herridge: It was our first time in the studio trying to fully self-produce. I think it’s positive to work with a producer – even though we think that we would like to produce ourselves a lot of the time.
But I think, sometimes having an external set of ears take what you’re putting forward… I think there’s a part of the process that, when you get an outside influence on your art, it sort of becomes something else. There’s some amazing self-produced stuff out there but I find it positive for our process. I like working with musical brains who are inspiring. I find they bring the best out of you, bring forth different ideas.
Something like a fourth member?
Herridge: Exactly that! But on a rotating basis. We can get different producers to come in, and it evolves the work and the art.
Finally, how often do you need to point out to people that it’s SNAYX, not SNACKZ?
Herridge: We thought we’d come up with the best band name ever, and we were like, “yeah SNAYX”. It was inspired by The Amazing Snakeheads, [which is] a band we both really admired.
And further down the line people were like, “Oh, I thought you were called SNACKZ!”. Where’s the “y” in SNACKZ? Maybe in hindsight, it wasn’t such a good name, but it sounds good!
Horner: We started printing some SNACKZ merch as well.
Herridge: Just to appease those people who insist on calling us SNACKZ. There you go!
You might as well buy some SNACKZ merch, then. Are you team SNACKZ or team SNAYX?
Find SNAYX on tour this week in London and Nottingham. Find tickets here
