New York based indie pop and visual collective duo Fly By Midnight is made up of songwriter Justin Bryte and songwriter/producer Justin Slavo. Following a sold out album show in NYC and performances at Firefly and Panorama festival, the duo has continued to generate strong independent buzz by releasing catchy original pop anthems and reimagined cover songs.

With over 250,000 subscribers on their YouTube channel, Fly By Midnight's consistently strong releases have been praised by tastemakers such as Billboard, Buzzfeed, NYLON, Huffington Post, and Ones To Watch, and have been placed on numerous Spotify New Music Fridays. The band members met through a studio based in Staten Island. Following a co-writing session, they decided to form the duo.

Verus Ferreira had a telephonic chat with the duo. Excerpts from the interview:

Hi Justin & Justin, how did the two of you meet? Did you’ll decide on ‘Fly By Midnight’ in the first meet itself?

Justin: We met in a studio in New York. It started off just the both of us writing and quickly evolved into the duo.

Slavo: We had our first single ready to release before deciding on our name.

Please give us a gist of how it is like to perform at the Firefly and Paranoma music festival?

Justin: Both were really different. What I loved about Firefly was, even though it was scorching hot out, us and the fans, just sweat it out together. Tons of energy and love.

Slavo: Getting to meet fans after both performances was a great feeling too.

Could you tell fans in India about your music? What genre do you cater to and how has your music evolved through the years?

Justin: We’ve always found ways to blend nostalgic elements into pop music, but it’s definitely evolved over the course of our career so far.

Slavo: What we love about creating for Fly By Midnight is there’s really no rule set. Some songs will pull influence from the 90s alternative era, while others have more electronic layers.

What are your thoughts on performing LIVE on digital media? Do you feel virtual concerts are the next big thing to happen to music?

Justin: Virtual concerts and live sessions have been around for awhile, but I think amidst everything currently happening they’re needed to sustain and strengthen that connection.

Slavo: We’d be lying if we said we didn’t miss the face to face adrenaline of a show, but these sort of performances allow us to reach everyone in the world.

Amongst your many covers produced over the years, which one would you say gained maximum traction?

Justin: It would have to be our cover of “We Don’t Talk Anymore”.

Slavo: I remember watching that go from 50,000 to over 10 million so quick.

Justin: We recently had the official video to our single “Love Me Like A Friend” have a similar “overnight” spike and it continues to feel unreal. That feeling never stops being wild.

What has been the most difficult part of your journey?

Justin: I would say being we’re like brothers, growing up and hitting these transitional points in our lives, there’s a lot of adjusting that takes place. It’s not always the easiest. From moving across coasts. To living together. To balancing writing for Fly By while writing for other artists. There’s just a lot of changes we’ve needed to work together on to get through smoothly.

Slavo: I agree. I don’t think we’ve ever had difficulty on the creative side. It’s always been just finding ways to continue supporting each other in these different chapters of life.

What was the inspiration behind curating ‘Fly By Midnight”?

Slavo: Coming up with the name was pretty anti climactic (laughs)

Justin: We’re night owls by nature. Always creating at odd hours.

Slavo: Calling something ‘fly’ is a very retro term that we thought resonates with the nostalgic vibes behind our music.

Any Indian artist you would like to collaborate with?

Justin: I think the Indian music culture in general is really intriguing to us.

Slavo: We love the idea of collaborating in a genre that’s outside of our comfort zone. We’ve been listening to Armaan Malik and we love his track Control.

Justin: Next time we speak we may be promoting a track we did with an Indian artist, who knows? We also hope to collaborate with MUNA and Charli XCX.

Fly By Midnight performed LIVE on 19^th May 2020 on the Instagram Page of Vh1 India for Vh1 Quarantunes.