Here at Dork, our favourite festival moments usually involve running around fields on warm Saturday evenings with a hog roast in hand. For Twin Atlantic’s Sam McTrusty, it’s playing bigger and better stages, marking out new milestones and finding new fans as his band catapults themselves to the top.
Playing Reading & Leeds’ Main Stage for the first time was huge for us. It was a big step up into the realms of important bands who have played over the years – hard for us to comprehend that we were getting to be a part of its story. It had taken us a few years to get there, so we totally grabbed the opportunity with both hands and played like our lives depended on it. We felt like we had earned it. It was so worth the wait.
Headlining our first festival in the north of Scotland was special. It was the first festival we had ever played and so to return for the fourth time as headliners was a real watershed moment for us as a band, but also as men. We had put our lives on hold for music, but this was the moment I think we all accepted that music had given us a life worth living and being passionate about.
Soundwave Festival in Australia was an outstanding way to play our first ever show in a new continent. On the Main Stage in the summer, when back home was winter. Being so far from home and having people know our music totally refreshed our band. It was the same story for our first shows in South Africa – we played Oppikopi Festival and didn’t know a thing about any fanbase we had there… we were greeted with a few thousand people who knew every word to nearly every song we played. It was as surreal as it was humbling. To know a song you wrote at home, in Scotland, or on tour and then experiencing life to the maximum extremes resonating with people so far from what we ever thought we could achieve. Another moment that breathed a welcome burst of inspiration into the future outlook of our band.
Headlining the NME Stage at T in the Park was iconic. A milestone. As a teenager, I had watched Kasabian, Nine Inch Nails or the Prodigy – massive, massive credible bands – all headline that stage. Walking onto an outdoor stage at night after nearly ten years of songwriting recording and touring… interviews, music videos, festival after festival – that was a crazy moment. We stopped to let what we were achieving sink in, but at the same time, it made us realise that we are maybe capable of even more. It was definitely a show that gave us so much confidence to go on and make an album like ‘GLA’ just a few months after. Having tens of thousands of people turn out and give you all that love and attention will do that in the end! Ha!
Twin Atlantic play Handmade Festival this weekend, 29th-30th April in Leicester. Visit handmadefestival.co.uk for more information.