Straight off the stage, after playing Middlesbrough Music Live, Faye managed to grab Canadian punks The Flatliners for a catch up. They got talking all about the release of the critically acclaimed Cavalcade, Fat Mike taking them under his wing, their customs drama, and a lot more!
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Faye: Can you introduce yourselves?
Chris: My name’s Chris, I play guitar and sing in The Flatliners.
Paul: I’m Paul, and I play drums.
Faye: How are you today on this rainy, dismal afternoon in Middlesbrough?
Paul: It’s a downer today with the rain.
Chris: Yeah, the show was still fun, though. We just ate dinner and it was really good. We showed up and we were playing the only outdoor stage, or one of only the outdoor stages, and it’s raining, but it worked out great. I didn’t get rained on at all. I feel good.
Faye: How did you find your set?
Chris: It was fun. Honestly, whenever we come to the UK and Europe and stuff, we usually headline, so we play for a long time, like an hour plus, but today we played like 35-minutes, it was awesome. We started a bit early, so we played for like 40-mins, but it’s so fun just to get up there and play, play, play. Like when we’re headlining we have to kill more time – like you saw the other night in Bristol, we were talking our heads off. So, yeah, I had a blast today. It was a good time. Other than the police beating up kids in the crowd.
Paul: The police wear stupid hats, too. Cops at home don’t wear stupid hats.
Faye: You were last over in September, can you give me a rundown of what you’ve been up to since then?
Chris: Tons. We finished recording Cavalcade, because at that point, last August/September, we had recorded 14-songs and when we got home, we jammed a bit. Then we went out on tour again with Strung Out and Dropkick Murphy’s for like two months, and then we came home in November, and Fat Mike came up to Toronto to work on songs with us for three days, and then we recorded four brand new songs after we did that with him for the record. The record took a while all-in-all to put together, but we’re really proud of how it turned out. I don’t think we’d ever do a record again the same way, in between tours, it’s kind of stressful. You kind of have two heads on all the time, like tour mode, and not even home mode, just like recording mode, it’s weird. We did it the way we had to do it with all the touring we’re doing, and it worked out great, we’re really happy with it.
Faye: You’ve been Europe for a few weeks now, haven’t you?
Chris: We’ve been here for almost a most. We have three shows left and we fly home on Thursday. It’s been really good.
Paul: The UK shows have been really good.
Chris: The funny thing for me about the UK, which is cool – well, for me – is that kids don’t want encores. It’s kind of cool, though, because I’ll play another song if kids want us to play another song, but there’s bands where no-one’s really asking for an encore and they’re like, “Alright, we’ll play one more song!” It’s just like, why? Only do it if your fans want you to do it.
Paul: Yeah, in Bristol everyone seemed satisfied, I was pretty cool with that. That was a hot show and now nobody can smoke inside, everyone just wants to go. [laughs]
Chris: The whole tour’s been cool, though. I don’t think we went anywhere new, so all the shows, we’ve been visiting places again for the second or third time, and the shows are getting better.
Paul: The shows in Germany were really good as well.
Posted by changetherecord 
Strolling back into Newcastle, four months after supporting punk legends NOFX at the Academy, Toronto’s The Flatliners are, instead, playing in the small intimate setting of the newly revamped Trillians, on this dreary Monday night.
Check out Daniel Hase‘s live shots of The Flatliner‘s as we managed to catch their recent headline show in Newcastle, with support from Mike TV.
If there’s one thing I learnt after interviewing The Flatliners, it would be to never conduct an interview on the stairs of Newcastle Academy during sound check again, because it makes transcribing even more of a bitch.
The Flatliners will be supporting NOFX on their UK tour in April.
