Interview by Clair Elizabeth
Photos by Carla Mundy

Carla (our photographer) and I head up to Rock City to meet up with half of Scotland's own, Twin Atlantic. After much confusion, phone calls and mix up we finally sit down with the boys, vocalist; Sam McTrusty and bassist; Ross McNae. After only hearing that they were going to be interviewed by us an hour or so beforehand, the boys kindly agree to sit with us and even apologise to any confusion on their behalf. As they were preparing themselves to go on stage we quickly got to know who Twin Atlantic really are.

MR - "How is the tour going?"
Sam- "Amazingly, too good, we're like uh, worried, that something really bad is gonna happen to us,
cos we've had, like, too much good luck, and the best reaction we've ever had."
MR - "No technical difficulties then?"
Sam- "Er..yeah, but that's just, you've got so much gear that if something doesnt break, the world will like, explode or something like that! So yeah, we've had one or two technical hiccups, but that's not a problem, like, the engine falling out the van or something like that, cos thats how smoothly the tours going."
Ross- "Cross your fingers, theres a long way to go yet!"
MR - "What has been the highlight of the tour so far?"
Sam- "Erm, it's probably been our Glasgow show to be honest, cos its like, hometown, and we played to considerably a lot more people, it was like 1900 people or something like that, so it was a pretty big event for us, if you know what I mean, but not to overshadow the other shows. Like last night in Leeds was amazing, it was like, another sold out show in England, which we've not had many of."
Ross- "It was really cool"
Sam- "That was our big positive night last night."
MR - "Saw a few awesome photos from the show last night."
Sam- "Oh yeah? Yeah, man I loved last night! It was really really unexpected."
MR - "I saw the response on your facebook page too, one was 'amazing show, pity im deaf!'"
Ross - "Yeah, there has been a bit of a running theme, we've been as loud as we've possibly been aloud to!"
MR - "How hard is it to be doing what you're doing as a touring band?"
Sam- "Erm..pretty easy! Yeah it's not bad, I think if like, you let yourself get stressed, or you take it seriously in the wrong way, not that we don't take it seriously! It's just that we don't like erm... If something goes wrong you just have to laugh at it,
if you know what I mean? Then, it shouldn't be difficult, cos this is like, a joke lifestyle, it's a lot of people dreams to get to do this, and we're aware of that every single day so it makes it really fun and easy."
MR - "What things can't you live without on tour?"
Ross- "Ermmm..."
Sam- (Laughs) "Vodka!" 
MR - "That's pretty much a bonus anywhere though!"
Sam- "Yeah that's true!"
Ross- "I dunno probably your mobile phone"
Sam- "I could deal without it, (to Ross) I know you couldn't"Ross- "I like to keep in touch with home too much."
Sam - "Yeah Ross gets home sick so his phone definitely. Mine is probably..."
Ross- "...Your guitar?"
Sam- "Yeah my guitar, or just like sugar or something."
MR - (laughs) "Sugar!"
Sam - "Yeah, fruit gums!"
MR - "See we said we were gonna buy some fruit gums, but we didn't, we could have won you over right there!"
MR - "What sacrifices as a band and individuals did you have to make?"
(Pause)
MR - "If any?"
Sam- "Erm..." 
Ross- "It's weird because we havent really had..."
Sam- "I mean we have, but it doesn't feel like 'sacrifices'. Doesn't feel like this big deal."
Ross- "Sacrificed the possibility of any form of career or money!"
Sam- "That's probably the main one, friendships, at one point relationships with family."
Ross- "Cos I think you're away so much that you end up, as sad as it is, a lot of your friends that are at home,
you kinda lose touch with, because if you're not there for certain times of the year. You can't expect them to wait for you, and everyone kinda like, grows apart, so your life kinda changes a little bit."
MR - "Supporting Blink 182 on 3 dates, (Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Dublin). Did you ever think you'd get this far? how does it feel?"
Sam- "Erm, well I never thought we'd support blink 182, that's the first live rock band I'd ever seen. I actually went with Ross, and I dunno, I genuinely had dreams about it, like, asleep dreams not day dreams, real fucking asleep dreams, and used to have posters all over my walls and actually still had a poster in my old flat when we played with them, so, its just one of those things that doesn't really feel like its happening. And it happened, cos we played, we met the guys and they were just really normal and kinda treated us as equals. Then we toured with Angels and Airwaves after it as well, and that was like a different vibe, and Tom was really forthcoming and became friends with us."
MR - "Were you awestruck?"
Sam- "At first yeah, a little bit, but we had the cushion of being part of the Macbeth thing, I dunno what to call that..."
MR - "...family?" 
Sam- "Family, yeah I suppose, that kinda took the edge of it, and once you've been on tour for a little while you realise everyone's just the same anyway; just a big, immature...family"
Ross - "Everyone's trying the avoid the same thing."
MR - "How do you come up with a good second album? cos I know alot of bands, they'll do the first album and you never hear of them again."
Ross- "I don't...(pauses to think)"
Sam- "What were you gonna say?"
Ross- (to Sam) "You go for it." 
Sam- "This is my angle on it...Thanks for saying it's good, firstly," 

(Everyone laughs)

"But, 'Vivarium', the first album, was like, a collection of songs from the first 2 and a half years...3 years, of us, just figuring out what type of band we even wanted to even be. So it wasn't really like an album, we didn't like write it as an album, it didn't really have any drive to it or focus really. It was just us trying to show off and get people's attention. Whereas 'Free', we felt like we had a statement to make, and like a point to prove, so it was a lot easier to kinda, make it feel like a cohesive...you know like we were a real band, so thats maybe where the step up comes from."
Ross- "Yeah I'd agree with that."
Sam- "What were you gonna say though?"
Ross- "Er, something kinda like that!"
MR - "Just exactly the same!"
Ross- (Laughs) "Roughly, yeah!"
MR - "Why did you make the choice to scrap 'Our Fear of Dying' and start onto the path of 'Free'? Did you keep anything from that album?"
Sam- "Cos Ross told me it was shit!"(everyone laughs) "That was why!"
Ross- "Is that actually...?"
MR - "He's not denying it!"
Ross- "It wasn't shit, it wasn't shit!"
Sam- "There's songs on this record that are..."
MR - "You kept them?"
Sam- "Yeah, maybe 3 or 4 maybe more than that actually."
Ross- "We were kinda, cutting ourselves off a little bit by sticking to the one, you know what I mean, we were almost making it hard for ourselves, just by trying to do only exclusively one thing, but if you just open your horizons a bit."
Sam- "But I think it was something that happened naturally, wasn't like we got to a point where we were like 'let's not do this', because, there wasn't any preconceptions about it. I think our horizons were broadened cos we spent a lot of time away from home, and went on tour in America and it was after that we were like, we had a different vibe to our band, and a different outlook and stuff so, it was like a natural thing, there was never a moment where we actually made a decision."
MR - "What should we expect from the future?"
Sam- "...a 3rd, really good album!"
Ross- "So you're saying the first 2 are really good?"
Sam- "Yeah."
Ross- "There you go!"
Sam- "I think they're good! Loads and loads and loads of festivals in the summer and more touring."
MR - "Are you booked up for the summer?"
Sam- "I wish we were, we kinda are, we just need to finalise everything and properly organise it, we might only do 1 or 2 festivals, or we might do 15, in England I mean, we just need to figure out..."
Ross- "...What we're gonna be doing, where were gonna be."
MR - "What do you guys do on your days off? do you get any?"
Ross- "Yep, tomorrow, we're going to Alton Towers!"
Sam- "I've never been to Alton Towers!"Ross- "We're staying at the Splash hotel!"
MR - "There's a pirate ship there!"
Ross- "Yeah! and we're gonna try and get a pirate themed room!"
MR - "At Halloween they had Halloween themed rooms where people came into your rooms and freaked you out in the dark."
Sam- "No way! fuck. off! I couldn't do that!"
MR - "There's a zombie apocalypse...what do you do?"
Ross- "Er...run! run away, so everyones a zombie? apart from you? I've gotta figure something out!"
Sam- "if there was a zombie apocalypse...I'd try to rule, overrule everyone and become the king of the zombies, make them believe I had power over them or something!"
MR - "Would you want to be a zombie?"
Sam- "Er, I don't think so, nah, I'm too clean for shit like that, I've got clean issues, we both do, clean freaks!"

Twin Atlantic's Album, 'Free' is out now on Red Bull Records.