When you announced your new EP Conceit on social media you said “a new era begins today”. How would you define GILT’s new era?

Tyler: I just changed the Twitter handle to “shaky cam breakdown era”.

[laughter]

Tyler: So that’s the new era.

Ash: Finally a shaky cam breakdown band. Yeah, I think it’s definitely a lot angrier but also we have leaned more towards a very produced sound as well. When we recorded the first record Lee [Dyess], who recorded us, was like “what do you want it to sound like?” and we were like “music?” [laughs]

Tyler: We didn’t know. Nobody had ever asked us that before. Everything else we did before I recorded in my childhood bedroom.

Ash: Definitely stepping up in a lot of different areas.

Tyler: Yeah. I mean let’s be real too this is also the first full original content since Ash took over vocals and that’s a major deal to us. The In Windows, Through Mirrors EP was like, “hey look, did you like the old stuff? We got a new singer”. And Conceit is like, "Ash is our singer and it’s intended to be this way". It’s not a weird transitional process.

Right, everything just flows together. How do you feel you’ve evolved as a band since you started in 2017?

Tyler: Ash when did you join 2019? Did you join in 2018 or 2019?

Ash: I joined in 2018.

Tyler: Ok so it wasn’t that long before you. We’ve changed a lot - all the members. I started the band as like, “I want to get in the van and go on tour and I have some ideas for some alternative rock songs”. I really didn’t know much about the genre and everyone called us a punk band for years because that was our whole thing - just get in the car and go. I was really interested in that and over time, as we met people on the road and stuff, we literally would be learning about music together as a group. Ash walked in from pretty exclusively metalcore and I walked in from pretty exclusively 2007 radio emo and then over the years we’ve talked about things we saw in person like, “oh I like that” and we did some research. The band’s distinct personality from “I just wanna be in a band” is the part that grew.

Ash: Yeah, I guess I would agree with a lot of that. I think it’s also just a lot of we’ve all been together and written music on the road. It's taking in every experience that we all are experiencing all at once and putting it into the music, so it’s like every time we’re out on the road it’s like we gain experience. We get to experience new things and see new things and add that to the music. That helps it kind of grow in that way as well.

How have the lineup changes through the years impacted the band and how you are now?

Tyler: It’s honestly been wild. Like I mean I don’t know how to respond to that without sounding like a stock answer.

Ash: People put their flavour and their spins into everything they do. Every guitarist is different because they all have a certain way of - I don’t know guitar notes - hitting an A# or an A chord. But stuff like that impacts the music because everyone is putting their own spin on it. When we have a member who leaves the band or a new member who joins it’s figuring out, “ok how do we incorporate this new sound this new person is bringing” or how do we kind of take the music as it is and make sure that GILT doesn’t change too much from all these different additions and it’s still GILT at its core if that makes sense.

Tyler: Yeah, I think the only thing I would add is most musicians feel like they have kind of their personal kind of default like what they like to do and obviously everyone is willing to do whatever’s necessary. So it’s like we usually have the music kind of written and then somebody’s kinda throwing their spin on it. But as you get to know somebody and you learn their preference we always kind of try to lean into that. Our drummer on Conceit, Ali [Reed], is a jazz drummer and she also does super proggy technical stuff. I knew her coming into this so I was like well I’m gonna write things that I think she would like to do. And then she was really excited about doing the sparse stuff because she was like, “I never get to do anything chill in my other projects, it’s always really technical.” So we as a group bent towards her and then she bent towards us and it’s really cool.

That does sound really cool. What’s your songwriting process like?

Tyler: Ash tells me a traumatic personal story, I go home and write some poetry about it, I ask Ash how they feel and then we dialogue about that until we kind of like where it’s at. And I’ll walk in with the bare bones of the song - here’s what I think the vocal melody is, here’s the general drum rhythm and guitar chords and then Ash will be like “let me fix your vocal melody” and then Ash does. And then Ali will be like “let me fix the drum beat” and she does.

Ash: Yeah I think what’s funny about that is I definitely have enough traumatic stories from my life to last us a good three more records.

Tyler: Big labels if you’re listening, we’ll take a three record deal because we have enough stories.

[laughter]

Ash: But yeah, that’s just kinda the entire writing process. And then we’ll come to a finished product of a song and we’ll probably sit on it for a minute and go to other songs or work on other things and come back to that song and be like “oh what if we added this” or “we’re into this new genre now so let’s see how we can incorporate this instead”. We were trying to do a lot of post-punk at one point with some songs and now we’ve kinda shifted into more hardcore territory. So we’re going back to the post-punk and going like “how do we shift this back to hardcore” you know.

Tyler: And you can’t forget the final step in the writing process - Well I guess this is more towards recording but then we show it to Hansel [Romero, producer] and Hansel makes it better.

Ash: Yes.

Tyler: I’m pretty sure that’s going to be an indefinite part of our process. At least if I have anything to say about it.

You just mentioned leaning more towards hardcore and you had a quote saying you “spent two quarantine years studying the hardcore side of post-hardcore”. I think you can really hear it on the EP. What was that process like of studying hardcore and moving more in that direction?

Tyler: Like I said we walked in not from opposite sides, but I think we walked in from two genres that orbit hardcore. Ash’s kind of very produced version of heavy music has a very specific kind of breakdown but it's very formula based. And my post-hardcore or like Thursday-style bands - they don’t ever really do breakdowns, they don’t really do chugs but they are kind of are ambiently screamy and their song structure is weird. Spending time learning about stuff that was neither of our growing-up-in-the-scene type thing helped us move more towards a genre that I feel is at the centre of all the tangential genres that we’re personally super into.

Ash: Definitely. I think kind of going from the music style when GILT first started was like very alternative rock but also sad emo and all that stuff. So it’s still in the same realm of alternative music. It’s all still in that same column but we were like, “How do we make it angry?”

Tyler: I think my favourite thing that I’ve gotten from hardcore is rhythm. It’s such a rhythm-centric genre and it takes a lot of the frills away whereas punk rock is very fast, push-moshy stuff. Hardcore is slow and driving and heavy and I think it helps us put the weird parts of the songs together, having a really central rhythm. My mom, on our first couple records, would be like “I just don’t get why you have to do all the screaming”. And it’s crazy because my mom likes Korn and System of A Down and Limp Bizkit. My mom really likes nu-metal and her favourite band is Nine Inch Nails. So going and showing her these new songs, I was waiting for the part where we’re screaming and she would make a face but she didn’t and I was like, “how come it doesn’t bother you anymore?” And she answered, “well the song just flows better now” and I was like, “solved it, hardcore was the solution”.

[laughter]

Hardcore unites all.

Tyler: It’s true though.

Were there certain bands that you were taking influence from during the writing process?

Ash: Oh yeah, I think definitely. Someone asked a question along the lines of between the two of us: what are your favourite bands and we were like if we were to put it in the middle of Tyler and I - our current style would be pretty much that. But we did listen to a lot of stuff also that was heavy in the shoegaze sense. Loathe was a band that we were like this is how thick and how absolutely demolishing we want the sound to be.

Tyler: Loathe and Nothing both of them.

Ash: So a lot of that. Those were the artists. And then a little bit of Deftones. You always gotta have a little bit of Deftones. I feel like no record has been made after White Pony that has been made without listening to Deftones.

Tyler: I’m gonna be real, I didn’t listen to Deftones. But Ash did. And since then we’ve been talking about them almost all the time. That’s one of those things like bandmates with different musical interests. It’s good.

Ash: Yeah.

Tyler: I was definitely listening to - I keep throwing this in because everyone we’ve talked to so far hasn’t known it, there’s a band called Have Heart - really famous post-hardcore straight-edge band. They have a record called Songs to Scream At The Sun and I’m going to keep plugging it because that’s what I was showing Ash. Specifically for the “Shape of Tools” vocals. There’s a really specific post-hardcore vocal style, I think it’s called false chord screaming, but it’s where your voice sounds like you’re hitting puberty at the same time. I’m really into that and I think that band does it really well. So it was them and also 156/Silence. They’re a good heavy band that does similar screaming. On Conceit each of your songs features a different guest vocalist. How did you choose who to work with?

Ash: Well the songs were already pretty much done and written at this point and the whole thing we wanted for this EP was to have a guest vocalist on every song. We already had the feature selected in the song and it came down to what style of vocals do we want to hear for this part. And then who of our friends or people we know do we want to have do it who is going to absolutely just crush it. We literally were all looking at our social media and Spotify and being like, “alright who is it?” We came down to a pretty good conclusion of people who not only really love GILT as a band but also who we also just like as people as well who are just really cool and really good at their thing.

Tyler: Now that I think about it, I think it’s pretty messed up - we got all of our first picks.

Ash: Yeah we did.

Tyler: There was nobody that said no. We just texted people. Nat [Lacuna, of The Holy Ghost Tabernacle Choir] actually came into the studio. They live in Savannah and we were like, “We’re in the studio right now, do you wanna do your guest vocal part like now?” And they were like, “I can be there by 4” and she showed up.

Wow that’s awesome! They're on “Trophy Hunter” and that song is just insane.

Ash: Nat asked, “Ok, how do you want me to sound?” and I was like, “Just give me your best”. Then Nat just started doing it and we were like, "Oh alright I guess it’s one take, alright. I guess we’ll all just go home". [laughs]

Tyler: Nat really put us to shame like one-taking it. That wasn’t a joke.

That’s amazing. How did the feeling of the songs change with each new vocalist?

Tyler: It’s gross for me to be like the vocalists made the songs the way that I knew they were supposed to be. I don’t think that they changed, I think the songs would’ve been changed if somebody would’ve said no and Ash would have had to do it. Because we had Ash doing back-ups of everybody in case someone said no or there was something wrong and we ran out of time. But you know the vocalists made the songs exactly what they were supposed to be. There was no way that “Amethyst” was going to work without it being Shaolin [G of UnityTX].

Ash: Yeah or even like “209” without Carson [Pace of The Callous Daoboys].

Tyler: Yeah like that part is just for Carson. There’s no way around it.

Ash: Syd from Doll Skin did their part in “Small Hollow Bones”, I literally could not record it. For some reason my brain just like I could not do that part. I think the thing is it was crafted in such a way that we were like, “oh yeah, it’s perfect for the people and it’s really going to excel for them”. We didn’t think about the part where we’re going to have to perform these songs live without them. So we’re working around that part now. [laughs]

Tyler: Every show, we’re just going to have to ask people from the audience to come up and do it.

Ash: Yeah.

Tyler: Which one of you knows how to rap?

[laughter]

Tyler: Everything we’re planning beyond this upcoming run, I’m already going to be in people’s DMs like “hey, I see you’re playing this show with us would you mind…”

Aside from the guest vocalists, how was writing and recording Conceit different from writing and recording your 2021 EP In Windows, Through Mirrors?

Tyler: I mean, like I said, it’s all fresh content so there was nothing to lean back on. We always thought of these two things as a single unit where In Windows, Through Mirrors is the soft, lush ballads where Ash really gets to flex that they can sing and these are supposed to be the opposite. Kind of not radio-friendly. A friend of ours was like, “you could’ve put In Windows, Through Mirrors songs on the radio” where like I’m pretty sure nothing on Conceit could be - maybe “Small Hollow Bones”, maybe. This was made to be really extreme and you put them together and you have a really nice, well-rounded record. The intent going in was not “let’s make something pretty” or “let’s make sure there’s three choruses on everything” or that there’s a really identifiable guitar line. It was like let’s make sure that people know that we’re angry. Let’s make sure that it's real obvious.

Ash: Yeah. I think that’s the big thing about it. We also wanted to have the instruments flex a bit more this time and have them come to the forefront. The cool thing about it is that we did the In Windows EP with Hansel - we recorded with Hansel and everything and it was…I’m not even exaggerating it’s such a life-changing experience like we always were talking about GILT pre-going to Baltimore and recording with Hansel, and now it’s GILT post-going to Baltimore, it’s a whole different world and ball game. Having had that experience and taking that into this time, still working with Hansel and also now having Lee, who recorded us this time for the Conceit EP, be there as well it really felt like we had been growing. I can actually see the growth, I can see the steps we’re taking.

Your EP is named in part for a literary device that is characterized by the use of extended metaphor. What influenced this writing style?

Tyler: I love literary devices. I love things that have multiple meanings. The frickin’ band name I mean, it’s been there the whole time. But this album is chock full of lyrical devices. You’re gonna have to get the vinyl and you’re going to have to get the lyric sheet and be like “oh that’s clever!”. The title is the same way. We like those things.

Ash: When we did In Windows the whole process of finding that name was sitting around a table with books out and dictionaries and just looking for really cool phrases or words that we saw. And this time, Tyler was like “I have this, it’s been in my back pocket, please can we use it”.

Tyler: See, sitting around with a pile of books thing was weird for y’all but it’s like a normal Tuesday night for me.

Ash: Yeah, yeah, yep. Books were around me!? [laughs]

What were you reading when you were writing and recording Conceit?

Ash: I was reading a book, it’s the Big Black: Stand at Attica, it doesn’t have anything to do with anything music related. But it’s a really interesting book that my grandfather gave me in 2020. I wasn’t reading it that in depth, I don’t think I even got past the 20th page but I aim to get better at sitting down and finishing a book and reading it start to finish. So Tyler, what were you reading?

Tyler: I was reading, it’s just going to sound pretentious, I was reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. But I am honestly not smart enough for that book but I knew that it was a book about language. The functional delivery of the book isn’t necessarily about the narrative but how the narrative works with the words and I thought - because I’m usually reading comics or micro-fiction - I thought that reading something full-length that had words that were placed oddly would kind of click my brain into weird places and it did.

Do you have a metaphor or a set of lyrics on the EP that you’re most proud of?

Tyler: Ok, I was just thinking about this this morning. I was like “oh I hope I get a chance to bring this up”. This is so dorky but one of Shaolin’s lines on “Amethyst” is “A censer’d disciple/stuck breathing in the smoke” and to me religion is a big part of my life. My dad’s a pastor, I have very complicated opinions towards it but if you look at the lyric sheet it’s not censored like telling someone not to speak it’s “censer’d” which in Catholic mass is the thing that they swing. It’s called a censer and it literally creates smoke. So for any My Chem fans out there when you see Mikey Way on screen, that’s what that man’s doing. So yeah, I was really proud of that line and I really hoped someone who grew up going to mass would look at that and at least chuckle.

Ash: Yeah, I remember being like I know that this is a word, I know that it’s not misspelled or it’s not a typo or anything. I keep changing what my favourite lyric is but this time it’s in “Small Hollow Bones” in the chorus. “Sit still. Self-soothe. Sedated.” I think to me, even though it’s not a very poppy but a very bouncy chorus and that line is very chill to me. It makes me feel very relaxed even thinking about it. I was just thinking, I kinda want to write down on a piece of paper like a thousand times over “Sit still. Self-soothe. Sedated.”

Tyler: That is the act of self-soothing. Right? God, I love alliteration.

Ash: Yeah, so that’s my line.

Yeah, the calm in the chaos. Did you have a song that was the most cathartic to write because you deal with heavier topics on the EP like death and grief?

Ash: I definitely think “The Shape of Tools” because I remember you were asking me like for lyrics you were like “give me something for ‘Tools’” so I gave Tyler some lyrics and they were like, “ok I’m gonna kinda like formulate this into the song”. But those lyrics were almost like a call-out around things that were happening in my life and it felt good to acknowledge it because for so long I had felt like there was no reason for me to be upset at people you know. I was grieving and mourning the loss of my father who was a public figure and he was like a local legend around here. It was just difficult because I didn’t feel like I had a lot of privacy but also I felt like a lot of people showed their true colours in that time. So the lyrics in “Tools” are definitely very cathartic to release and acknowledge these feelings I have of feeling like everyone’s hurt me more than they’ve helped me and it’s kinda been good to let that go.

Tyler: Yeah. I think that’s probably the most like I could point to lyrics and be like, “this is a true story about Ash” This was a thing that happened that I was turning into like just enough of a metaphor so that nobody was going to be like “oh excuse me?” you know. “Why is my name written down here?”

Ash: “Why does it have my home address right there? And phone number? That’s weird”

[laughter]

Ash, you play cello on the EP. How long have you been playing cello for?

Ash: I played cello from third grade to junior year of high school and it was like the thing I was doing to keep my parents happy like I’m doing an extra-curricular and it’s a musical instrument. This was before I started playing the drums. I remember the day - “do you want the violin, the viola, the cello, or the upright bass?” and they were going through small introductions of each instrument and all they said about the cello was “it rhymes with jello” and I was like that’s the one, I don’t even like jello but that’s the one [laughs]. So I picked it and I didn’t really appreciate it the way I should have when I was in school, I didn’t take it super seriously but I still tried to practice at home and I sounded horrible but I realized when I moved down to Florida and I graduated high school. It had been a few years living here that I realized, “oh I still have my cello from school” and I picked it back up and I was like, “I still remember how to play it!” We were in the studio and we were like “well, we kinda want an orchestra section” and we kept begging Lee because Lee has a cello in the studio and knows how to play it and can play the piano beautifully, Lee can do everything.

Tyler: Lee is so good.

Ash: Just so great! And we were like “Lee please” and Lee was like “no” and it wasn’t a no like, “I don’t wanna do it” it was just more so like, “you’re fine, you’re good”. I was like, “I could do it” and I definitely didn’t do it as well as Lee could have but it was cool to incorporate that element to it.

Tyler: You did a great job.

Ash: I played two notes.

[laughter]

Tyler: And you played them so well.

On a future release are we going to see a full orchestra?

Tyler: I mean we like Cursive so…

Ash: I do also know people like my friend Felix from school who I talked to a few weeks ago who is actually writing full symphonic pieces with full orchestras. And was like, “Yeah if you’re ever in Connecticut again and need to record something just come to my little studio place, I have so many orchestra instruments”.

Tyler: I mean there’s going to be a point where we’re the only Florida band that doesn’t have a feature from JER from Skatune so we’re gonna need to do this.

Ash: Very true. Very, very true.

Would you write a ska song just for the feature?

Ash: Yes.

[laughter]

Ash: I just kinda want to do it just to do it because I love ska.

Tyler: Yeah, we don’t talk about every band practice where I annoy people by just changing our songs into ska songs. Just changing the strum patterns.

[laughter]

Ska remix album soon. So you’re playing Decolonoize Fest in Berlin this May. The festival highlights BIPOC artists and it kicks off your first overseas tour. So what does playing this festival mean to you?

Tyler: It means we get to see The Muslims which is absolutely insane. I don’t know when Maja told us she got it but it was really nice. We don’t know anything about being over there. We have been told by a bunch of people that unlike in America where it’s like, “oh a touring band from somewhere else” and people take their smoke break during that time, there there’s novelty of being somebody from overseas so they’re like, “oh we want the American band to play longer even if we don’t know their songs.” So that’s interesting but then it’s like being a novelty is also not super exciting. Starting off with something where there’s people who probably have very similar experiences to you, that’s more of like a peer-to-peer camaraderie thing, I think that’s going to be a really nice introduction to being in a new place for us.

This is your first time playing off-continent so what are you looking forward to the most on this tour?

Tyler: Not driving! Yes!

[laughter]

Ash: We just talked with Naomi from Distorted Magazine and Naomi loves dolls just like I do. I was so excited because Toys R Us does not exist in America anymore which I am very upset about because that was like my haven I would always go there to look at Monster High dolls. Naomi was like, “oh yeah there’s tons of toy stores still” like something called Smith’s I think. So I’m very excited to go to Smith’s and also just to be over there and Berlin is a place I’m very excited about. I’m very excited about Berlin because that was a place that my dad performed in a lot and I heard a lot about how much he loved Berlin so I would at least like to finally see this place he talked about so much.

You hold a yearly charity festival called Snipfest that raises money to help people with gender-affirming name changes. Last year the festival was virtual. What are your plans for this year? Do you have plans for this year?

Tyler: We haven’t talked about it this year just because everything’s been so up in the air. You know like at first it was like shows are back and then it was like every band that goes on tour gets COVID and especially being in Florida it’s less safe here. It’s been hard to discuss it but we have a pretty consistent group of people who like to contribute to it so we can hit them up. It’s usually September-ish or November, it’s like late in the year so we have a little bit of time to plan it. And the first two years were actually for surgeries. It was just the digital one that was name changes because we weren’t sure how much money we were going to get from it. So we were like what’s something that’s less expensive that we can do for more people. We ended up getting a lot, like A LOT a lot.

You will also be touring the US in the spring. So how have shows changed since the pandemic began?

Tyler: I don’t know, it’s like when people used to ask “oh how hard is it being a queer band? Do you ever run into a bunch of complete assholes?” Very rarely because the people we know are the people we inherently trust. And I feel like it’s the same thing with COVID. Ash and I are still sometimes the only people at the gig wearing masks. But I would trust a room of punk kids especially at the shows that we book, it's people we know and trust versus walking around my local Wal-Mart.

Ash: Yeah, I wear a mask wherever I go and I used to be really, really not terrified but like terrified.

Tyler: No you cannot over exaggerate how intensely you isolated.

Ash: Even when I was around people, not even so much like a handshake or a high-five or anything. I was afraid of any kind of physical contact and just being around people and wearing my mask 24/7. And I always wear my mask now. I can’t even think of a time in my future where I’m not going to be wearing one in public because it’s become such a part of me and I definitely think that’s a new part of it. I’m always aware of the people I’m around and still keeping my distance to an extent. On tour before the pandemic it was like DIY, so we were sleeping and crashing at friend’s houses but now it’s a different story especially when we’re having people join us for the tour. We’re telling them, “hey, we’re still taking a lot of safety precautions but we still sleep at people’s houses that we trust as well but if that’s not comfortable for you, we totally get it.” It’s like trying to cross all our t’s and dot all our i’s.

Tyler: I do want to mention briefly I gained a lot of respect for the Fest. Just recently a couple of places started bringing in mask mandates again and Florida has so actively railed against that so the state will fine or penalize businesses who require vaccine cards or whatever to get into events. It’s really bad here. The Republicans love it but definitely our governor is going to try to run for president eventually on this platform - “I kept Florida free and open”. Anyhow, the Fest did a really good job of talking directly to the bands and saying “we legally cannot mandate masks or vaccine cards but could you talk to your fans on a personal level and kind of express the sentiment”. It really made me feel like more of a part of a community because I knew that everyone had my best interests at heart and vice versa. Everyone else just kinda throws their hands up and says “oh we can’t enforce it so…”

So how would you describe the Florida punk scene?

Tyler: Sparse.

Ash: Yeah. I grew up in Connecticut, I had a high school band so that was our music scene. Just all of our high school friends kinda thing. But coming down here, I had never been in a formal DIY music scene and it has changed a lot over the years. There’s really good Florida bands here but we all live 3-4 hours away from each other so it’s very spread out and it’s hard to have a centralized area like up north where it’s if you live in New York you can go to a show in New Jersey or Connecticut.

Tyler: Yeah. Florida has a lot working against it. We don’t have basements. We have a lot of noise ordinances because you know, old people. We’re very geographically separated and there’s no accessible public transit. Like Ash was saying, if you're in Philly or New Jersey and you want to go to New York or Connecticut you hop on the train and it’s a couple bucks. Here it’s like if a band is from Miami they are just pretty well fucked.

Ash: Yeah. Also because people don’t come to Miami. Usually when bands tour and they go down to Florida they don’t go that far.

Tyler: They usually go to Orlando. And that’s about it. Everywhere there’s good bands, but Florida has a really hard time getting bands that get to the next level because there’s just this massive infrastructure barrier. It’s nobody’s fault, it just is what it is.

Are there any Florida bands that you’re listening to now that are up and coming that you want to shout out?

Tyler: Talk about being from Miami and absolutely doing your best - Palomino Blonde. I think they just put a record out, not yesterday but pretty recently. That’s material that they’ve been working on for years. And Zeta’s going around right now, they just got their van broken into and could definitely use some attention. I think they’re actually coming to Jacksonville next Wednesday. It'll be nice to see them. Virginity are our labelmates on Smartpunk, they’re very cool. Casey is like the exact same flavour of millennial that I am so we get to shoot the shit a lot. Obviously Gillian Carter. I’m really into this new band called Supertwin. They’re on Salvage Records, they’re out of Gainesville. I saw them at Fest. They have two drummers and they just play at the same time and it’s just really booming. It’s really cool. Her New Knife is a cool new band that was gonna do one of the Mannequin Pussy dates in I think, Tallahassee. They’re a cool shoegaze-y band. I’m sorry, I can just keep doing this. Is there anyone that you wanted to mention Ash?

Ash: I was gonna say, JER has just released two singles I believe. And I love ska. I love JER’s music, even Skatune Network is amazing but I like their original content. It’s just so good. Very excited for that. Also Glazed is just really cool.

Tyler: I am literally wearing a Glazed shirt right now. [laughs] Glazed is like the eternal best friend of every Florida DIY band.

Ash: Yep. And if you don’t like them there is something so wrong with you.

Tyler: Yeah, they’re just super nice. I’m in another band called Lethe. Pretty much anything that Knifepunch puts out, I would keep my eye on.

You recently signed to Smartpunk Records. How did you decide who to sign with? What has this process been like?

Tyler: It’s been great.

Ash: Yeah.

Tyler: Our manager Maja, of Queers to the Front, had gotten in touch with them. We’ve known the people in Debt Neglector for a long time so they’ve been aware of us and they were like “hey, you know we have a label right?” and I’ve lived here and been in the scene for a million years and just have not talked to people about Smartpunk so it ended up working out. Maja tested the waters and they were like, “yeah, GILT we know you” and we were like, “oh cool”. Then Virginity was like, “you know that’s the label we’re on right?” and we’re like, “oh cool, I had no idea”. [laughs] I’m always just staring at Deathwish you know like gotta get on Deathwish so I’ve never really paid attention to what was happening right next door to me.

Ash: Yeah.

Tyler: But it’s been great. They made us a really generous offer considering it’s an EP at a time when vinyl pressing is backed up. We talked to a couple of bigger labels and the ones that were nice enough to give us a reason for the no were like, “we don’t want to put out a band that’s not going to put out a full-length record because we want a full-length record on vinyl, that’s how we make our money”. And Smartpunk was like, “we love you. You have an EP? You already made it yourself? Here, done, solved. And we’ll put it on vinyl. And we’re like, “how? How?” [laughs] They’ve just been really nice to us.

That’s great! What’s next for GILT?

Tyler: We’re going to be playing a show with JER in the future and we’ll be playing Knifest in July. I don’t want to spoil too much but I have a pile of songs already ready to be a record. The next thing we’re going to do is start planning on that and there’s no timeline, there’s no like here’s what we’re going to to, we’re going to go on the tour, we’re going to see how everybody likes Conceit and like we were saying earlier about learning on the road, based off of what we see, who we meet, how they take it and what they tell us about it, that’ll affect what we’re about to make. But that’s the next thing we’re probably going to go into a little hole and start making something.

Ash: Yep

I’m looking forward to hearing it!

Tyler: Oh, likewise. There’s some songs in there that I’ve been sitting on since before our 2020 album.

That’ll be great! Do you have anything you want to add?

Ash: Music video! Our new music video for “Trophy Hunter” is out. Very excited!

Tyler: Like and subscribe.

Ash: Like and subscribe. Comment, rate, share, flag, report, block, unblock, now I’m just quoting Doja Cat’s TikTok.