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Firstly the name Tiger Mimic where did this come from? Most people in a band will tell you it’s really not east finding a band name haha! Originally it was just us trying to find words that we like, that fit well together. There are literally pages of word lists and rejected names that just didn't work. TM was on the back burner for quite a while, but eventually it clicked with us and became the official name. We were also pumped to learn that a Tiger Mimic Queen is a sort of butterfly that has evolved a defence of having the appearance of poisonous species of butterflies, so predators avoid eating them but they're not actually poisonous themselves — we all liked that whole ‘pretend to be dangerous in order to survive’. Plus Jess is obsessed with cats, which are like little fake tigers. Hey, Jess here, it’s a perfectly healthy obsession haha they are perfect creatures, after all. Also maybe they’re obsessed with ME, ever thought about that?
Who would you say the bands biggest influences are? We all have fairly different influences, though there is plenty of overlap, but here are some of our main ones:
Jess: Bjork, System Of A Down, Nirvana, Maria Callas
Bram: The Doors, Beatles, & Hendrix
Ben: Beatles & Tom Petty
George: Beatles, Led Zeppelin, & Hendrix.
We also all love David Lynch, both for his music choices and the sort of mysteriousness of his work overall.
This year you have released the single “It Was Still Dark” and “Where The Fire Used To Be” how has the response been for these songs and do you have any plans on more releases this year? We've been really pumped with the responses so far. Where The Fire Used To Be just came out on August 14th so we're still in the initial rush of press and radio, but the response has been great so far. It Was Still Dark came out in May and has already passed the plays for our EP, which is really exciting for us, especially since it was the first song we had released in over a year! We do have one more song that we're planning to put out this year, probably in the Autumn, and then we'll see what we get up to after that!
How else have you been keeping busy creatively over the past year with everything going on and do you have any plans for when things get back to normal? We were nice and busy with shows in the end of 2019 heading into 2020, and we had a whole busy summer lined up that has, obviously, not happened, but with the new song releases we've been keeping fairly busy. We made a couple music videos, one of which just came out, and we've been working on new material. We did a few live streaming events over the past few months too, which was a little surreal but still nice. And I think our plans for the future are similar to everyone else's: PLAY SHOWS ALL THE TIME WE MISS SHOWS PLEASE LET US PLAY SHOWS, and also record new songs.
For anyone who has not seen you yet how would you describe your live shows?
On the whole, we tend to have pretty energetic sets that have a lot of twists and turns. We love playing around with dynamics and different vocal arrangements, so there are lots of
fairly dramatic shifts and, hopefully, exciting moments!
What have been some of you favourite live shows you have played so far? One of the first ones that really clicked for us as a band was at The Monarch (RIP) at the very end of 2018, I think it was only our fourth gig as a band, we just loved that place. We had an awesome sweaty, cramped gig at The Good Mixer that was unlike anything else we've ever played, so fun! Cro Cro Land Festival was just an amazing day all around. And we really miss playing at The Dublin Castle, feels a bit like our home base and we're dying to get back to those noisy nights in Camden.
Finally if you could recommend five acts right now who would you pick? There are soooooo many rad bands right now, hard to pick just five, but here are five that we could go see any night of the week and be extremely pumped!
Kid Kapichi
Nova Twins
Berries
Jemma Freeman And The Cosmic Something
Lucia & The Best Boys
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