We caught up with grunge fuelled quartet Chastity this week. The four-piece from Whitby Ontario, Toronto are already making waves in their native Canada and we're all but sure those waves are going to reach across the Atlantic very soon if their new track, 'Manning Hill' is anything to go by.
1. Who are Chastity?
Chastity’s my friends Sam, Nolan, Steve and I. We’re a group who play music based out of Whitby Ontario, a town just out of Toronto.
2. Who are your biggest musical inspirations?
For me it ranges from Fiona Apple to The Smashing Pumpkins or just any music that’s visceral but still grounded in actual raw truth real life shit. Fiona Apple, Billy Corgan, Aaron Marsh and Neil Young have been those examples for me in my writing, something to aspire to at least. If I could speak for Sam, Nolan and Steve I think it goes from Drive Like Jehu, to The Stone Roses, to Black Sabbath. the mix is weird but it’s getting there, bare with us.
3. How would you describe your sound?
People have been describing it as rough shoegaze. I'm not sure.
4. You recently uploaded your new release 'Manning Hill' to Soundcloud, tell us a little about this track?
Manning Hill is the biggest hill in Whitby, it’s where my friends and I skate. I’m still picking at scabs from the last time I slammed on Manning Hill. Whitby's mundane, but like any town it’s only mundane if you let it be. Manning Hill is sort of that for me, like a way out or something, at least just for a minute. The song is about feeling fucked in the head, and looking at the town from the top like that, knowing that everybody in all those houses feels a bit that way too.
5. Where do you see yourselves in 5 years time?
Oh man, I think we’re taking it day by day/song by song/show by show with this right now. In the way that the writers that I look to have been able to reach and resonate and help me, if we could have that on even one kid in the next 5 years, that’s where I’d like to us to be, just among the lost.
6. What's next for Chastity?
Right now we’re playing 9 shows close to home here in Ontario and Quebec. We play our hometown with our friends in Spells of Vertigo next on Friday night, Friday the 13th. After that we’re going to write, hopefully put out a single or something near the summer. I want to write like 20 songs and then decide what to do next, we’re on our way there.
Follow Chastity on Twitter.
Listen to Chastity and 'Manning Hill' via Soundcloud.