Alter The Press! Presents: Ghostlight

After ditching their electronic sound and re-branding themselves under a new name of Ghostlight. The Cambridge four-piece have become a dynamic indie group with comparisons to Straylight Run, Snow Patrol and even The Fray.

2011 will see the group release a new album, 'Somersaults' as well as a new double A-side single 'Morning Lights/Fingerprints', which will see the bands light, acceptable indie pop sound become more known, as Ghostlight look to growing their fanbase with their sincere approach and delicate songwriting.


For Fans Of: Snow Patrol, The Pixies, Coldplay and The Fray.

Alter The Press: Why should Alter The Press! readers check you out?
Ghostlight: HA, well, you should check us out because we've got some good songs, I hope! We're a very sincere band, we really love doing what we're doing and we're certainly not trying to be anything that we aren't to fit into the current music scene. Which may mean we're not to everyone's tastes - but I'd like to think we're doing something a little rare - making some big, indie songs that have a high production level but are all done by ourselves so hopefully retain some bedroom intimacy. I don't know, that's the balance we'd ideally like to hit. We're incredibly invested in the project as a whole, so we really do create everything to do with the band ourselves - from the covers, the websites, the production, the youtube material, and organising gigs etc - it's all just us. Even the music videos; I just finished directing the two videos for our double a-side Morning Lights/Fingerprints (out Feb 14th) and am currently up all night editing and grading them. It's really hard for us to give any of that creative control up.


ATP: What's the story behind the band?
Ghostlight: I went to film school with Thomas (bassist) and we used to do little gigs together for our friends. After we left we started playing open mic acoustic gigs in Cambridge a lot and a few in London while we both worked on our own projects. I managed to get some money together and we decided to record our first studio album shortly after and that's where we met Jason (guitarist and producer) who engineered and helped produce those initial recordings. We hit it off with him immediately and became good friends. Then I was asked by the late great Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse to tour with them on their UK dates which was incredibly exciting as he was my favourite artist in the whole world, but we only had two weeks to get in shape and essentially create a full band. So Jason jumped on board to help us out and brought along his old school friend Patrick (drummer) who did drums for us - we all had so much fun that it wasn't long after the tour ended that we decided to form as a band officially; coming up with a new name and focus and started looking for a manager. Since then it's just been an incredibly busy couple of years developing the debut album and playing gigs.

ATP: Single highlight as a band so far?
Ghostlight: Technically we weren't called Ghostlight at the time but getting to tour with Sparklehouse was an incredible experience. Recording the album in the Big Room at Peter Gabriel's studio Realworld was a very close second. I'm at my happiest when in the studio working on new material and we were so lucky as we had booked out the little wood room next door and then we had a phone call from Realworld apologising, as Tom Jones had rung up to say he wanted to change his booking from the Big Room to the wood room to try out a concept for his new album. This meant we were upgraded! It was a sensational 10 days that I wish I could live over and over. Getting to be in that room at 1am with all the lights down on my own playing the grand piano was a real thrill and our future single '6 Years Later' came out of those moments actually, as I wrote it whilst we were there.


ATP: What are your plans for the 12 months?
Ghostlight: We have big plans! The next singles are out on the 14th Feb as I said and then the album will finally be released the first week of March which we're incredibly excited to see what people think. We then have the follow up single '6 Years Later' out shortly after and we're currently trying to organise a tour to coincide with those months. We're already writing a couple of new singles that aren't on the album. One is to give away for free at the beginning of 2011, the other is to be released later on in October as a stop gap for the 2nd album which we'll hopefully be able to record late next year. I've just spent the last few hours working on some of the new songs so we'll be introducing them to our live set throughout 2011. Other than that we're going to be doing loads of stuff online - lots of videos and freebies and a couple of surprises too so keep checking our website as it's all going to be updated in time for 2011. We will be doing our own spin on online gigs soon as well. Thanks kindly for asking and taking the time to listen!

Official Website
Ghostlines on MySpace, Twitter and Youtube.