THE Hunna are a rising English indie rock band that you don’t want to miss out on. Their swift rise to stardom has resulted in them bagging number three on the UK Indie Chart with their album 100 and number 13 on the Official UK Album Chart. Playing Reading and Leeds Festivals and Community Festival and with their hit songs Bonfire, She’s Casual and Piece By Piece, The Hertfordshire-based band, which formed in 2015, the Hunna are going from strength to strength.
Recently the band played a secret show in Manchester for the Dr Martens Stand For Something Tour, The Hunna is all about Individuality. Glass spoke to Hunna to find out more about who they are and what they’re about.
Tell me a bit about the band, where are you from? How did the band form?
All four of us are from Watford in Hertfordshire, we were all born in the same hospital. We’ve known each other for a long while, when we were 15/16 the band started from there but it had other members. Jack our drummer has been drumming for 15 years in other bands, Dan has known Jermaine since they were six years old at school and then about four or five years ago it all came together as us four, finally, and The Hunna was born.
You’ve recently played Reading and Leeds Festival, how was the overall experience of that?
It was amazing. There have been loads of amazing moments over the last year but that was probably one of the best. Our album came out the first time we played Reading & Leeds the year before so to go back and headline the stage was just incredible. It was really special, the whole weekend was absolute madness for us, there was so much going on. We had other friends and family there, it was a really special night and the set was mental, the crowd were incredible and we had a big party afterwards. It was a good way to end the year.
Last year you released your debut album, titled 100, what was the inspiration for the album?
It was kind of just an album of lots of songs that we’d had for many years. I mean, Bonfire we wrote when we were 18, we’re 25 now so we’ve had some songs for a long time now and some are newer. They’re all just songs about when we were younger and the process of getting to this point and actually finally getting signed and be able to tour and have people hear our music. It’s everything that’s happened in our lives up until then.
Who are your musical influences?
There’s so many, we listen to so many different artists. Michael Jackson definitely, the four of us love MJ. Kanye West, Drake, Kings Of Leon, Deftones, Wiz Khalifa, Nirvana, Foo Fighters, old school bands like Thin Lizzy, Led Zeppelin, Motley Crue. We love a bit of Motley Crue! There’s so many. We all have different taste as well so we’re constantly introducing new artists to each other and it just keeps growing.
If you could see into the future, where do you see The Hunna in five years?
I see us as being in one of the biggest bands in the world and being a global band. Our dream has always to be like our favourite artists and bands like Kings Of Leon, Arctic Monkeys and The Killers, bands at the top of their game and the highest that you can go playing stadiums and headlining places like Glastonbury. That’s always been our dream and our goal so we’re going to constantly keep that in mind and, hopefully, if we keep believing it will happen.
Reading and Leeds definitely was but I’d say the American Tour the last one we did when we were there for two months was insane. We started the tour with Jimmy Eat World who are legends and one of our favourite bands to grow up listening to so that was really cool and pretty crazy. Then we did two other tours, a radio tour for a month or so with two other American bands who we’re now really good friends with.
The Hunna
You’ve played a secret show for the Dr. Martens Stand For Something Tour, and it was all about diversity and individuality, what makes you guys individual and what do you stand for?
We get negative stuff given to us because things have happened pretty quickly for us over the past year and people have been weird about our music and where we come from and have stories about us but we stand for a world with no restrictions and being able to do what you believe and not have the majority of the world make you feel like you can’t do something that you really love or believe in. If you want to do something you can do it, if you love it and put your mind to it you can do it.
I think there’s a lot of negative shit in the world and being in a band we’ve had people say, ‘Oh what do you want to do?’ and when you say you want to be in a band people kind of mock you and laugh at it because of course everyone would want to be in a band but we’ve followed it through and now we’re doing it. We’re here so we’re going to keep on track!
by Abigail Jane Winterford
In case you missed it, watch the video of The Hunna playing their secret show for the Dr Martens Stand For Something Tour here
Images courtesy of Dr Martens and The Hunna
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