AS Sea Girls head for Southampton Joiner on Saturday October 20 drummer Oli Khan chatted to the Daily Echo...

What other bands would you most compare yourself to?

Obviously every band likes to think they’re incredibly unique and incomparable but realistically we’d like to align ourselves with bands that inspired us to start playing music in the first place. Bands like The Killers, Kings of Leon and The Strokes got us excited about guitars in our youth and we aren’t shying away from trying to make music that sounds as big and entertaining as these bands.

You played lots of big festivals this summer, including the mighty Reading & Leeds, do you feel you gained lots of fans playing at these festivals?

We'd like to think that after 22 festivals we picked up at least a couple of fans! It was amazing playing busy shows to tents full of people singing along. Hopefully people walking by, mates that were dragged along and the inquisitive types were all sucked in to the excitement and will now come and g to check us out on our October tour.

The new single, All I Want To Hear You Say, is a big, anthemic, arena-ready rock song- is this the sort of direction you’re going for with your music?

With every song we try and approach it differently to try and get the most out of a song - with All I Want To Hear You Say we wanted to get across something so intimate and personal but put it behind this big sound. They say to dress for the job you want not the one you have, so maybe there’s a bit of projection there from us!

You currently have three storming EP’s to your name, is the plan to release a few more EP’s before unleashing a debut album on the world?

We’re just going to keep writing and see what happens! We definitely plan to have an album out next year, it’s important to have a focus point for your writing. Once you’re saying ‘it’s album time!’ you can start to set out the vibe and what kind of songs we want on there. There’ll definitely be old songs and there’ll definitely be songs that aren’t even written yet, it’s a very exciting process.

Being in a band can be hard work, especially when out on tour, being surrounded by the same people day and night- how do you make your band dynamic work?

We’ve all been friends since school long before we started Sea Girls, so that definitely helps. The best thing is not take ourselves too seriously and try and have a good time at the same time as working really hard.

There are a lot of critics saying that rock and guitar music is dead, what do you say to that?

Have a listen to Jack Saunders’ new Indie Show on Radio 1 and then get back to me...

How do you think your live performances have progressed since you first started as a band?

I think we’ve definitely come into our own performance-wise. It’s always been about enjoying ourselves and enjoying what we’re playing. We’re a lot tighter than we were a year ago and bringing even more energy than before. We love playing and we want everyone to have as much fun as we are having onstage, whatever it takes! Having even more songs that people can respond to is amazing. It really helps us give everything we can, the more we get the more we can give.

What are your ambitions for 2019?

Keep writing songs. We always want the next one to be better than the last. Working on the album is definitely a priority, we really want something special with our name on it out there. We want the shows to get bigger and better. Playing Reading and Leeds this year was a dream come true, we’ve seen so many bands we love there so it feels incredibly special, so who knows what venues we'll be playing next year - we need to think bigger now!