It ain’t easy being a band with a single syllable name in 2017. Just ask Sorry, the band formerly known as Fish, until they realised the name was already taken. “There’s this guy called Marillion Fish,” starts Asha Lorenz, one half of the duo that makes up the core of Sorry.
“He was going to sue us!” Interjects Louis, the other half. “He said, ‘If you don’t change your name I’m going to sue you’. Then we wouldn’t be able to make any merch; it would have been pretty peak.”
They’re pretty sure they should be safe now though. “Sorry is really un-Googleable,” Louis explains.
“Well, there is that Justin Bieber song called ‘Sorry’, maybe he could trademark that?” muses Asha. “That’d be quite funny though, so I don’t mind.”
Potential lawsuits dealt with; Sorry tackle the question of how best to describe their sound. “Bedroom music, but then it’s a bit rockier with the whole band. Lo-fi grunge?” Asha starts.
“Sad grunge, but a bit tongue in cheek,” Louis adds. Unlikely to get confused with anything by Justin Bieber, then.
A band that would rather show than tell, Sorry have just released their first mixtape ‘Home Demo(ns)’ and have plans for an album in the next year. “The mixtape wasn’t proper, it was all bedroom demos,” Asha is quick to say. “Our first actual single is out in November, and we’ll have one out in January, too.”
“We’ll probably have an album out and play loads of shows too. Maybe we could go to Japan…” Louis muses, before Asha cuts in, giggling: “For a holiday!” Louis clarifies. “No, we do wanna gig there.”
[sc name=”pull” text=”We wanna keep playing while we record the debut”]
It might sound like Sorry are a band with their collective tongue firmly in cheek, but they aren’t all jokes. “We do see this as a career,” says Louis. “When people started coming to our shows, and we could play gigs outside of London a bit, probably about a year and a half ago, that’s when we realised it could be serious. That was really cool, when we realised people were actually coming to our shows!”
“It’s been getting bigger pretty steadily since then, which is good.” Louis continues. “We’ve signed to Domino, which is really exciting, and we’re in the process of starting work on the debut album too…”
Asha cuts him off. “Domino approached us a while ago, but we spent a while thinking about it.”
“And then we finally decided to go for it!” Louis jumps back in.
The two come across like brother and sister, constantly interrupting each other and taking the mick, but the mood never goes beyond mild annoyance. “Me and Louis have been friends for like ten years,” explains Asha. “We’ve been playing music together for ages too. Sorry formed when Luke who lives on our road started playing drums with us, and Campbell joined on bass after our first bassist went to uni.” She laughs: “We just found Campbell walking around Camden.”
“We wanna keep playing while we record the debut, we really enjoy the live aspect,” Louis enthuses, and you can tell he means it. “It’s really important to us, so it’ll definitely still be about, even when we record.”
Speaking of gigs, Sorry play a lot of shows with bands from South London, despite not being from there. “We’re from North Weezy.” Asha jokes, when asked about the South London scene.
“It’s probably just location and age, isn’t it? We’re all from London, and we’re pretty much the same age.”
“The music’s completely different though,” Louis adds, referencing bands like HMLTD and Shame. “What is a scene? I guess it’s a scene of bands, but not of sounds… Everyone’s nice though!”
“We’re all good friends.” Asha elaborates. “We met through playing together, and especially through Shame and Dead Pretties, we’re just mates.”
“I hate their music though!” Louis adds, laughing.
Looking forward to 2018, is there anything Sorry are excited for? “I think Rihanna’s releasing a new album actually,” Louis says. “I wasn’t that much of a fan of the last one, but I did like the ones before it, so we’ll see. Apart from that, Alex G will probably release a new album, knowing him… Oh! It’s the World Cup, isn’t it? That’ll be fun.” Sorry to perform at Russia 2018? Louis laughs. “Shout out to whoever would organise that, just imagine it.”
“Festival-wise, I’m not sure,” he muses. “Primavera maybe? We’re really not sure.”
“We’ll play any festival, though.” Asha butts in. “Every single one!” What would their dream festival line-up be? “That depends really,” starts Louis. “If we were serious about promoting it, I’d say the Beatles, because then we’d sell loads of tickets.”
So there you have it. Catch Sorry next year at any or all festivals, especially the ones that are headlined by the Beatles.
Taken from the December 2017 / January 2018 issue of Dork, out now. Order a copy here.