Turnstiles are an alternative punk band from Galway, Ireland. They formed in March of 2019, initially playing gigs in their friend’s living room. After pestering local venues to play and getting no response, they founded and curated a free, local independent music night called ‘Free House’. They continued running these monthly, free of charge, finding it was the best way to give themselves and other new local artists a platform. Since these initial gigs they have headlined in Galway, Dublin and Limerick, playing venues such as the Roisin Dubh, Whelan’s and The Button Factory. They have released four singles to date, which have amassed over 160,000 Spotify streams. Before lockdown, they had been booked to play festivals such as Forbidden Fruit and K-Fest, as well as tours of Ireland and the UK.
Lockdown came as a huge blow, but they took advantage of the opportunity to focus on writing. This was something they hadn’t had the time to do before, as they started getting regular gigs only a couple of months after practicing for the first time. For the initial few gigs they opened and closed with the same song, Wasting Away. They spent any time they could over the summer in Cillian’s shed in Tuam working on songs and drinking tea.
Their aim with this debut EP was to deliver denser textures while retaining the energy of previous releases. The four tracks sound as full as possible while still using minimal overdubs. The theme is economic and social systems and how they inform our actions and life choices. It focuses on personal and political issues as they both contextualise the other.
They recorded in Lakeland Studios with Mike O’Dowd and mixed with Daniel Fox of Girl Band. Mike has been really important in their development as a band and in the studio and they feel at home recording with him. They’re all huge fans of Daniel and his ability to craft dense yet minimal sounding tracks, which is why they wanted to work with him. They have plans to gig all over Ireland in 2021 and they plan to get over to the UK too.
Drums: Luke Mulliez
Bass: Jake Tiernan
Guitars: Cillian Ryan, Colm Sweeney
Vocals: Callum Mitchell
https://www.instagram.com/turn
https://www.facebook.com/turns
https://twitter.com/turnstiles
https://www.blowtorchrecords.c
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