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Mondays are usually the days I look the least forward. However, the 11th of November was quite a different day as I had the pleasure of seeing Dan Croll live with Sunflower Thieves supporting him.

Sunflower Thieves is an indie-band originally from Derbyshire, now based in Leeds. What bonds Amy and Lily is their lifelong friendship. They are friends since they are five years old, clearly forming a sisterhood through decades of being together. I had the pleasure to talk to them about their second EP Same Blood which marks their lifelong friendship.

Hey, thank you for taking the time to talk with me! Did you become and feel any closer to each other now after writing the second EP?

Amy: We know each other since we are five years old and every writing session is like a therapy session, it’s like a new thing which we are exploring. These songs are the most honest and direct  than anything we have written before.

What I found so interesting about your first track „How was America“ is that I immediately associated it with the US elections, even if the real message of the song is more about a lost friendship, about a ex-friend who moved to the US. What do you think about that?

Lily: Love That! I have not thought about that at all. We love if the meaning changes to person to person from time to time. It was originally about someone who was leaving, also about an emotional kind of leaving. I am gonna analyze the lyrics again later and see how I can relate it in your view (laughs).

With „Driving Lessons“ I loved the lyric „Can you believe it’s possible to feel like that and still be an optimist“ What do you mean by that? To me these lyrics were about death, acknowledging the darkness and still have this huge belief in life.

Lily: Yeah, that lyric originally is about feeling exhausted about life, but not to the stage of wanting to die. Not being scared to death, but rather be ready to sleep for a bit (laughs). That lyric is definitely more about anxiety than depression and letting the feelings flow over you rather than fighting them. It’s very much written in a retroperspective way about anxiety.

How is the process of songwriting for you?

Amy: A lot of the songwriting process is that we come with a lyrics section and come together and work out what we want to say. So the other person starts asking questions about the lyrics of the other person to find out what the lyric is trying out to say.

Lily: It usually happens that it’s wrong to start with and we have to flip it a few times and find out what it really means. We always write our songs in this collaborative way.

Amy: Both EPs we’re written with people we love and love their music. The first EP we made with closer friends and with the second EP we could branched out a bit more after the pandemic. We wrote the second EP with Sam Griffiths who is in a band called The Howl and The Hum and we also wrote some songs with him for the first EP. „Driving Lessons“ and „Same Blood“ were written with Pet Snake and we came closer with her while working on the second EP and she played the cello as well.

Same Blood now available on all streaming platforms.

Was the intention of the record to sound more like live music?

Lily: Yeah, I guess. We always start out with vocals and acoustic guitar. We love all acoustic instruments really and I love to make them sound electronic and play crazy effects on it and blend them into a warm, acoustic sound! One of our first singles „Hide and Seek“ there’s like a bar of violin in the verse which I stretched it out to make it sound more wobbly and comes in later as an original version. Our drummer is playing the violin on his drum pad and I titled that violin sample „bumblebee“ (laughs).

Did you always feel like siblings or when did you start feeling like this to each other? Is it even musically marked somehow?

Amy: I didn’t even realised that’s how we feel until more recently. Writing „Same Blood“ highlighted that for us, because we didn’t realise how unique it is to know someone for that long and to work with them and be in the same friendship group.

Lily: It became apparent when people that didn’t know us say „you guys must best best friends in the whole world“. But we said, „it’s more complicated than that“. Since we work together we also need to spend time for our friendship. We learned to communicate better and not take each other for granted.

Is it your first time that you have been playing in Europe?

Amy: Well, we played Osnabrück two times and played at their main festival. We’re from Derbyshire and Osnabrück is their partner city. Then we played other shows in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, but it’s our first time to do a full run of dates in Europe. I always wanted to go to Copenhagen. We won’t see much from the city, but it’s exciting and nice to see the view from the car. We’re also excited to see Berlin.

What were you inspired by while making the record?

Amy: When the songs were written, we didn’t decide to write on a record, we just were writing in general and the title track is about us two, our meaning of friendship. 

Lily: I go to reference production for Phoebe Bridgers, Julia Jacklin. When we wrote „How Was America“ we wanted it to be more gritty so I listened more to Billie Eilish, but we always fall on Jemima Coulter’s „Grace after a Party“. I like the simplicity of the instrumentation in this album. There is not a lot going on, but it’s done very interestingly.

How did you get introduced to Dan Croll?

Lily: We just started working with a new manager, he is amazing and an absolute legend (laughs). He knows Dan’s manager, so he put us forward and they liked us and picked us and now we’re here and that’s great!

Is there a favourite song from Dan Croll?

Amy: We’ve really been enjoying „How Close We Came“. I love that song, it’s such a beautiful song and I love hearing it live. I’m trying not to take it for granted how many times we hear him live.

Thank you for your time you two!

I’ve met the girls before the concert at Feierwerk.

You can listen to Sunflower Thieves‘ EP Same Blood here.