In this day and age, one could be forgiven for simply hitting the off switch. As labels both major and independent alike continue to produce a seemingly never-ending stream of pre-packaged acts ready to be your next favourite band, some listeners have decided to just ignore the whole thing.

As far as many pundits are concerned, longevity is dead. An acts comes out, releases the album, the ubiquitous single, and then disappears, never to be heard from again. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule and one that instantly springs to mind for any Australia is British India.

The band recently hit the 10-year milestone, a staggering achievement in this day and age. But as frontman Declan Melia tells Tone Deaf, the band achieved this feat not only by working the traditional industry system, but have been sustained by the very elusiveness of success.

It’s that constant drive that has brought the band to 10 years of existence as well as a brand new album, Nothing Touches Me, which is out now via Liberation Music. Tone Deaf spoke to Declan over the phone to find out how British India got here.

TD: Is there an album that you feel was a breakthrough moment for British India?

Well, the breakthrough album was the debut album. Before that, we couldn’t sustain touring and we were just another young hopeful band. That record really changed everything for us. Those two or three singles, ‘Tie My Hands’, ‘Run The Red Light’, and to a lesser extent, ‘Russian Roulette’, people really took notice of them.

It was really surprising because we’d already been around for maybe four years and the record had been recorded, but no one wanted to release it. It took a long time for it to get released, it just sat on a shelf. So I think we weren’t expecting anything remotely like the success we got from it.

But people connect with those songs. I look at it now and I think the music scene at the time, there was stuff like Van She and The Valentinos and The Presets, quite dancey and slick, almost ‘80s stuff. And then we come out with this really raw and rustically recorded album, and that’s kind of one of the things that helped us stand out.

TD: What about a single? Would it be ‘Tie My Hands’? That song was just everywhere.

It was. It killed it in the Hottest 100 and it just… it’s not a good creative headspace for me to be in to think about why it was so successful. But that was like our second single and at the time it was a departure for us, because the EP was a lot more punky.

But ‘Tie My Hands’, we were kind of maybe a bit embarrassed about it before it came out, because it had the quiet harmonies and I wasn’t shouting quite so much. I mean, we just couldn’t believe it. We couldn’t believe that it had happened and I remember the tour after that album being incredibly fun and it set up our love for touring.

TD: Did the success of a song you felt conflicted about have any impact on your subsequent songwriting?

No, I think the success proved that we needn’t be embarrassed. It proved that we were doing something right. It’s not like we sat there and wrote the song because we wanted to have a massive hit. We wrote songs like that because that’s the kind of music we love listening to.

We like catchy pop songs, which has always been the biggest crime, because it’s kind of incongruous to say you like catchy pop songs when you’re in an indie band. But we wrote that song and then they put it out and radio picked it up and it was months after that that we were able to quit our jobs and do this full time.

“We couldn’t believe that the system worked – radio plays your songs and people want to hear your songs live and they go to your gig.”

TD: Is there a certain gig that you look back on as precipitating an important moment or event in your career?

Well, our early gigs were all kind of as typical as you can imagine. We did some really rotten tours. We went on tour with, I can’t remember the guy’s name now… he was on Australian Idol later and won it… Wes Carr! We supported Wes Carr’s band and I think at the Bendigo show there was one payer or something. We were literally playing to the bar staff.

So our tours around that time was just us playing for ourselves. Once that record came out and we went to Perth, which was the first show of the first tour, we walked into the club in Fremantle and Matt turned to our manager Glenn and asked, “Why are all these people here?” and Glenn said, “They’re here to see you guys.”

We couldn’t believe that the system worked – radio plays your songs and people want to hear your songs live and they go to your gig. It seemed too good to be true. Then after Thieves came out, we played in Falls Festival in Melbourne on New Year’s Eve.

We were the first guitar band on and it was the first night and it was just starting to get dark and there’s great footage of us playing ‘Black & White Radio’. Since then we’ve played bigger festivals, but that show was the first time we felt like we were in a big band.

TD: Are there any other festival performances that are like that for you?

The last time we played Splendour was probably my favourite festival performance we’ve ever done. It was absolutely idyllic. It was kind of a combination of things. It was just after our third record, Avalanche, came out and we just had enough hits that we didn’t have to play… it was mostly singles, you know? So the setlist was really snug.

We were only on for 40 minutes, but it was the first time that we came out and it was hit, hit, hit, hit. It was when we maybe finally started to feel some confidence about our place in the Australian music industry.

Because obviously we weren’t the biggest drawcard at the festival, but even the headliners only had one or two singles that worked the crowd, and I’m not gonna purport that we took the crowd more than the headlining bands, but it was the consistency of it, you know? There were no lulls in the setlist. And that’s something we’ve since become immensely proud of.

TD: How do you account for your longevity? You said yourself, you’re not necessarily a Splendour headliner, but you’re still around. That in itself is remarkable in this day and age.

I’ve thought about it, but I’d say that the biggest motivator or the biggest factor in our success has been precisely that – we never headline festivals. I’d attribute our longevity to our lack of success, as odd as that may sound. It’s been an amazing career, but we’ve never had a number one album or a gold record, we’ve never headlined massive rooms.

But when we were playing in a garage we dreamed of playing in a pub, when we played in a pub we dreamed of playing in a theatre. So it’s always that driving force to get to the next level and I think that hunger goes away too easily when you achieve those things early.

I mean, the proof is all around us, but the bands that achieve success quite early — I mean, there’s obviously exceptions — but they kind of lose the thirst and it clouds the judgement of what to write about how to write and then the records kind of dry up. So I think our passion to get British India to where it needs to be has been the biggest contributing factor.

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The second thing is, we’re incredible friends. We’ve never had blowouts or anything, we’ve always been in the band together, it’s always been the same four guys, none of us have been in any other bands. We get along very well and we always have.

And thirdly, we love music. We’re four guys who love music. You know, I listen to the radio these days and the first song that comes on I’m like, “Man, that’s great! I wanna do something like that!” I just can’t wait to get in the studio and put my ideas together. The inspiration comes from other songs and never dries up because the perfect song still hasn’t been written.

TD: So you’re optimistic about the state of music right now?

I like music as much as I’ve ever liked it. I think Australia’s in a pretty good place right now. When we started it was pretty crappy. You know, that was as the whole Jet thing was winding down, and The Vines and stuff, which I liked the sound of, but it was a bit skin-deep. Maybe from a lyrical perspective it was like the Emperor’s new clothes. It was just people singing, ‘Yeah’, which is the biggest crime.

But I look around now and there’s great bands – San Cisco, Ball Park Music, who I’m just so impressed with everything they do. And I think it’s maybe because guitar bands are a little bit under the zeitgeist of dance music, which seems to be the biggest thing that’s happening, which is healthy.

It means you pick up a guitar for no other reason than you want to write a cool song, not because it’s a catapult to fame, which I think it had been in the wake of The Strokes and The White Stripes and stuff. So I think it’s cool for guitar bands to be underground again.

British India’s latest album, Nothing Touches Me, is out now via Liberation Music.

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