Who are you and where do you originate from?

We are The Calling Card and are from Newport, South Wales. We have Benj on vocals, Steve and Simon on guitar, Kyle on bass and Hobnob on drums.

How did you get into playing music?

Growing up with bands like Oasis and Nirvana. If it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t be in a band today, to be honest. Most of us had been in bands before and known each other for years and we all just kind of gravitated towards each other. We all have the same love and desire for music so it couldn’t be more perfect.

Do you write your own material?

Oh yes, 100%. Usually I’ll write the song on an acoustic at home then take it to the band and turn it into a full band song. I couldn’t imagine being in a band and not writing your own music. That is what connects you to the fans.

There is no greater feeling in the world than having the crowd sing back a song that you wrote in your bedroom.

How would you describe your style of music?

Just a great mix of everything we love.

We will never lie and say we are reinventing the wheel but we do make great music.

We try and bring everything to the table, from Oasis to Nirvana to Biffy Clyro to Feeder. We have a song on the album called Camden Queen and the lyrics in it say, “We don’t care about cliques, being brutal, scene, hip or cool or sic”. We don’t care about sub-genres, we just aim to write the best rock songs we can.

What’s your best live experience so far?

It’s either a toss-up between supporting Alkaline Trio or supporting Ian Watkins, from Lostprophets, in Solus in Cardiff.

Yo u can’t be in a South Wales band and not somehow be influenced by Lostprophets. They made everyone in our age group believe that people from this area of the world can become a really big band. It was also the first ever show we had booked so it was an unbelievable way to start.

What are you working on at the moment?

We have just released our debut album, Everything Yo u’re Not, which you can find on Itunes/Napster/Play.com etc. We have some music videos coming up soon for our singles so keep an eye out for that as well!

Where can we catch you live?

We are currently working on booking a tour for the end of summer so keep checking back to our Facebook page to keep up to date with all of our announcements.

See facebook.com/thecallingcard for more information