British boy band (and eye candies!), The Vamps were in Mumbai sometime back. The quartet Brad Simpson (lead vocals and guitar), James McVey (lead guitar and vocals), Connor Ball (bass guitar and vocals) and Tristan Evans (drums and vocals) returned to India after two years and can’t wait to perform for their fans.

Fresh from their new studio album ‘Night and Day’ that’s packed with new songs, the band whose fan base comprises more of the fairer sex, are concentrating more on their live shows this time and meeting up with fans, as Verus Ferreira who spoke with them found out.

Since your last visit have you picked up any Indian music and learnt any Hindi words?

Connor Ball: Yes, we keep exploring new music in Bollywood; however we in general love the whole language.  Indian culture is one thing that keeps bringing us back, we have received a lot of love and so we are back on our third visit.  

Can you tell us something about your new album ‘Night & Day?  Why do you have two editions, Night and Day?

Brad Simpson: For our third and fourth album we were determined to change things up all over again. It’s good as a musician to do that, to experiment. It satisfies other aspects of your song writing. But to be honest, the electronic direction was quite unexpected, even for us; we didn’t start out fully with that intention.

JamesMcVey: The whole idea of doing a two-part album was to give fans more songs over a short period of time. My favorite bands always released an album every 18 months or so. And now, especially in the age of social media and life being so instant, people want stuff all the time. So leaving it two years for a band like us, it could be quite dangerous. So we thought it would be nice for the fans to just get more, more quickly. We also thought it would be nice to take fans on a journey. “Night and Day could represent literally the stuff you do in the evening, like dancing, partying and the things you do in the daytime, relationships, work… Or it could be life and death… In lots of ways, the contrast between the Night and Day albums is huge. Day is going back to the roots of the Vamps: organic, instrument-driven song writing and playing.

You guys have been around for five years now, do you relate to any of the songs you’ve done on a personal basis?

James: All our songs have a different story to it and all of us somehow or the other relate to each one of it.

Who does the songwriting in the band?

James: We all write songs as we do our individual work on each song and eventually club it into one.

Many bands including Coldplay have shot their music videos in India, have you ever thought about something like this?

Tristan: We do have plans, nothing concrete as of now.

You might have been asked before, but how did the name The Vamps come as a band name?

Tristan: We are obsessed with Twilight, hence The Vamps.    

What is a live show of the Vamps like?

Brad: We bring a mix of our old and new songs, and we are extremely excited to get their live reactions.

By Verus Ferreira