In an era where it has never been more of a challenge to break into the music industry yet new artists have never had more opportunities to share their music than ever before, two lads from Hamilton are bringing people together.
Aptly named “Mick N Phil” the twin brothers are making their mark on their community playing a range of styles from well-known country classics to their own original music.
Ahead of the release of their upcoming EP in October and their brand new single The Key the boys admit they are always striving for perfection when it comes to their own music.
P: “The sounds vary greatly between each song and that was one of the hardest parts of the process because we would nearly finish a song, but then we would go back to the drawing board.
“We really want to make sure everyone gets the same vibes from the songs as we do.”
Not ones to leave the audience feeling left out, the duo believe interaction throughout their sets is very important.
M: “We want to create a party atmosphere for people and have a laugh – if they’re going to spend their hard earned money coming out to see us we want them to have a good time.”
“We have loads of original music right now as well as a band who plays with us and we are even thinking about bringing bingo in to play a half time segment.
P: “Sometimes if it’s really busy and we know folk are enjoying themselves we’ll ask the crowd to throw songs at us and try to play them off of the top of our heads.”
“Even if it’s just a minute of the song and then we will jump to the next one and so on – it’s gone wrong countless times.”
Authenticity, being true to yourself and showcasing your personality is what the newest generation of music fans is looking for and both guys are happy to help people going through difficult times.
The writing process of one of their most popular songs Like It Used To helped them to express how they feel about tragically losing their mum to suicide when they were both just 18 months old.
M: “When something like that happens in your life it seems to be the only thing you can think about and we were writing in the summer time so we really wanted to write a summer song, but we couldn’t zone out.”
“We have done quite a bit of work with different charities and we started to see different situations are scenarios people would go through it influenced some of our music.
“We really wanted to find out what makes somebody feel that what and do those sort of things and we started volunteering with people.
P: “We had to write that song to move onto the next one.”
“I think one of the most magical feelings about music is the fact that everybody can take their own messages from our songs and that’s the beauty about music.
The brothers don’t miss a beat when reaching out to potential fans all over the world and they know you only have seconds to grab people’s attention online.
Go listen !!https://t.co/hZgbpsIYq0 pic.twitter.com/OsU9sJkxgg
— mick n phil (@MickPhil) July 12, 2019
M: “We like doing one minute covers on Instagram right now as it’s a really good way to get folk to listen.
“One of our favourite artists to cover is Tyler Hilton, who played Chris Keller in a show called One Tree Hill, he’s an incredible musician as well as an actor.
“When we first started doing gigs years ago we would do country covers and people would ask if they were our songs and when we would tell them who it was they had no idea, but we would tell them to go and watch more of our covers on YouTube.
“Now when we play songs by other people at our gigs they know them because they have seen bits from our channel.”
Header image: Zoe Dargue.
