Author: Eva McFarlane

Hello to Dan and Iain, thanks for agreeing to speak with me today! To start us off, could I get you both to introduce yourselves, telling me a bit about who you are and how the band came about?

Dan— Well, I’m Dan, I’m the bass player and I also do the backing vocals for Crossing Giants. I was born in Dublin and lived there until I was about twelve, my folks then decided to move to Perth, Australia. I lived there for eighteen years and now I’ve been in Scotland for nineteen years. So I’ve been a bit of an Aussie Irish, Scottish mix, and  I’ve played in various bands over the years, but me and Iain have been playing together for the past fifteen years or so.

So do you think that getting to live in different countries influenced the music you created and listened to?

Dan— Definitely, Australia’s different from Scotland in terms of art and music. They have their own artists over there who have become massive in Australia but could never really make it big in the UK or the US. Certain elements of that I’ve probably picked up over the years, while the Irish and Scottish side of music is very similar, just with having similar interests in the same regions.

Iain— And for me, I sing, play the guitar, write tunes and I’m Scottish. My taste in music and what inspires me is completely different to what Dan listens to. I suppose we have a few crossover bands though. A lot of the stuff I listen to is not what I play, it’s usually a lot harder, darker. Frank Turner was a big influence in us doing this, taking a punk band and just using acoustic guitars to make music, strum some chords and shout over the top of it.

I saw you play at the venue Purple Orange, how do you think your performance went and would you go back?

Dan— We’ll we’ve played there a few times before, it’s always a good place. It’s close to us, so it’s not a far distance. The guys there are really good.  I like that place, we’ll probably play there another two or three times this year.

Iain— With that gig, we hadn’t rehearsed for a couple of weeks, and we were talking about it afterwards about how we sounded quite scrappy. But, we reckon we made up for the scrappiness and sheer mindedness by just having a laugh and it kind of worked. But it’s said that if you make a mistake, repeat it and everybody will think you meant it.

I don’t think anyone would have noticed, it was a great night overall. Now, I really enjoyed listening to your single, ‘Wish to the Sky.’ It sounds very emotional. What was the message you wanted to put across?

Iain— It’s about trying to survive in an underprivileged area. That’s just what everybody is trying to do, that’s not something new, it’s something that’s everywhere. That’s not how it started off but that’s how the song ended up, it’s just supposed to be about a guy getting drunk, waking up and thinking ‘where am I?’

Dan— I think the video suits the song, it kind of fills in the blanks for any kind of questions that might come up.

And for the ‘Wish to the Sky’ video, tell me about the process behind creating the it. Were there any challenges or memorable moments that stand out?

Iain— That was all Dan, he did the video and just asked me to turn up one night. Dan does all the good stuff.

Dan— We basically just shot it all on my phone, and for a lot of it, it was just me walking around with my phone held up as I was videoing myself. You have me walking into Lidl’s and pretending to steal a bottle of beer and chucking them. We did pick them up at the end, though, so they were disposed of correctly. Me and Iain briefly appear in the video, we’re walking past this character, it’s my son who was holding the phone at that stage, he’s the one who flips us off as we walk by. It was probably shot over two or three days really, and just going between Broxburn and Glasgow, we just filmed things that tied into the video.

That is quite interesting, I know it’s obviously meant to have a deeper meaning of the underprivileged and their struggle, but while watching the video, at times it felt a little darkly comedic. For example, with the bottles being thrown around and at one point, there’s the character whose POV we see throwing up.

Dan— That is the kind of vibe we were going for. It’s got serious undertones, obviously, but it’s one of those things we want people to remember.

For starting out in the music industry, what advice would you give to aspiring musicians?

Iain— Do what you do, it’ll make things easier and quicker. I’m not somebody that gets into scenes, I like individual bands.

Dan— Just be yourself, there’s deals out there and we’ve been offered a few of them, we record our own stuff and put it out there ourselves independently. There’s a lot of guys out there who just take, and the deals are offered but you read through the contract and you realise that the deals aren’t actually that great, so we’re glad we declined the offers.

Have you got any 2025 goals for the band, and if you do, how do you plan to reach them?

Iain— So we don’t have any plans to write or record this year, we just want to play because we spent so long last year writing and trying to fine tune things. Because we do it all ourselves, we spent an awful lot of time trying to get things recorded and mixed. We didn’t get to play a lot of gigs last year, so we just want to get out, have a laugh and meet new and interesting people.

Out of all your songs, do you have a favourite, and if so why?

Dan— I like Slip off the Tongue, and I still like Stand your Ground to play, it always gets a good crowd reaction which is always good.

Iain— See, I’m more about the process of writing, I like writing stuff, then you record it and I never listen to it again. I like just playing live. Every time I play, some songs are better than others, some songs are easier to play than others. Our last gig, ‘Stand your Ground’ was good to play, but when you saw us, it wasn’t. I found it was really hard to play. I’m very fickle, I change a lot.

And are there any songs that you are not so proud of? Maybe one that you would go back and change if you could?

Iain— We’ve got a song about getting drunk in Edinburgh and trying to look for a taxi home. I don’t think we did it as much justice and I cut the song writing process a wee bit. The song was done well when we played it, but we just haven’t played it for a long time.

Dan— But it’s funny because that’s one of the ones from the first album and it’s one of my favourites.

Iain— Yeah, I thought I didn’t finish it properly, I could have done a wee bit more with it. There’s another song in the first album, it’s a kind of folky one, I don’t think we’ve ever played it live, it’s called Morning Star. It was good to write, but then I didn’t like it.

Dan— Everything that we’ve done I actually stand by, there’s nothing that I’ve thought has been a total train wreck. There’s always songs in albums you like more than others, may not be the most popular songs. But who knows, we might come back to some of these in a couple years time and give them a try again.

Iain— There’s a song we’ve got, ‘Wish you Well’, we end the set with this. The sentiment is that it’s the end of the night, you’re leaving, thanks for coming sort of thing. That was rewritten over a period of time after it was recorded, now it’s played in a slightly different way. Even ‘Stand your Ground’ is not played the way it was recorded in the first album.

And what about inspiration, I read that you take inspiration from The Dropkick Murphys, Flogging Molly, Frank Turner, and The Gaslight Anthem. Can you explain in what ways this is the case?

Iain— They write songs about people, everyday situations, they reference situations from a persons point of view. Gaslight Anthem, they’re very much like Springsteen, all kind of working class hero type of stuff. Frank Turner is quite political in his own way, a lot of the songs I listened to as a kid were quite political.

Dan— Yeah, Flogging Molly, Dropkick Murphys, if you strip them back to just acoustic guitar and bass, it wouldn’t be a billion miles off what we do, it’s usually upbeat, lively type of stuff. With our own stuff, we try to deliver a sort of punch, have a bit of an impact, they inspire us and give us an idea of what we want to do.

Iain— If you look at the lyrics of these bands, they create images within the lyrics, they’re meaningful. You can see the song, that’s important, it’s what we strive to do.

Are there any more recent artists that have been inspirational to your work?

Iain— Spirit Box, their lyrics don’t mean anything but they work really well, they’re a really good band. Heartworms, she’s really good, her show is fantastic, it was like I stepped back thirty years, it was very goth, very intense. Her lyrics are very imagine-conscious, it creates a scene rather than just tells a story.

Dan— I’ve been recently listening to a lot of funk, old school. Bootsy Collins, some of his more recent stuff as well, but that’s totally different to what we play, but it gives some baseline ideas. Lenny Kravitz, been listening to him a lot recently, he’s sixty years old but his most recent album came out last year, it’s really good, I enjoyed it. It does change though, if you ask me this in three months time, it would be a totally different answer to what I’m listening to.

You can follow Crossing Giants on Instagram and listen to them on Spotify.