Skateparks & Broken Fingers: The Wild Ride of CHASING DOLLS

Chasing Dolls show up like a welcome glitch in the system: everything shifts, everything vibrates, nothing behaves, and that’s exactly the point. They’re the sort of band that turns sleep deprivation into religion, skateparks into sanctuaries, and personal disasters into plot twists.

If you’re meeting them for the first time, buckle up. These guys operate somewhere between emotional exorcism and pure adrenaline, the kind of chaotic harmony that shouldn’t work but absolutely does. Think late-night confessions, blown-out amps, missing fingers, rogue pop-up gigs, and a brotherhood so tight it could survive a small apocalypse.

For people discovering you for the first time: what’s the core pulse of Chasing Dolls, the part of your identity that doesn’t shift, even as your sound evolves?

Great question! A combination of passion and perspective. We have dynamic sound to narrate our dynamic life. We’re also introspective throughout the chaos that we find ourselves in. So in answer to your question, this pulse of ours is all over the place, but very firm! Our identity is introspective but eager for change and chaos.

Your sound sits at the intersection of emo, rock’n’roll, and “we might cry or punch the sky, depends on the night.” What’s the emotional cocktail behind Chasing Dolls, and which ingredient ruins it when someone overpours?

Passion is the emotional cocktail that makes it rock n roll, and then when it pours all over the stage in a raw form, it only feels right to mention emo when describing our sound. Especially with the notes that Munch and Theo play. Will’s drumming and our sections will always catch you off guard and then give you security and strength.

That’s what we love about the emo/math sound and why we incorporate it into our sound. We often communicate with each other through our jams before even checking in, sometimes. Then afterwards, we usually have to definitely check in. (laughs)

Your new single “Blood Moon” reads like a late-night confession whispered to the sky. What’s one thing the moon knows about you that your fans don’t… yet?

So beautifully asked, thank you!

The song was inspired by the perception of the moon, thinking of the perspective of how a heart was feeling at the time. When feeling lost and overthinking, the moon seemed so far away, then when an intense feeling came on, the moon suddenly became so clear and lit up my mind. This is the metaphor the new single follows.

Generally, the moon watches us care infinitely about the band and our music until we fall asleep. By which point the moon has usually fallen asleep first, as we’ll be up all night writing, jamming, plotting pop-up gigs, and trying to dedicate as much time before work at 7 am.

It’s also seen the moments where we learnt to play together. Theo joined and learnt bass because he was our best mate who also skated. (laughs) The moon watched him spend late nights learning and finding his stunning style on the bass! Or when Hayden lost his finger, the moon cast Munch into our lives. (laughs)

Your origin story includes pop-ups, shutdowns, sold-outs, and… missing limbs? That sounds like a tour diary written by a cryptid. Please spill the beans.

With this combination of chaos that we’ve mentioned, the stories are the chapters of it. We’ve played pop-up gigs at skateparks like our local one deep in the southwest of the UK, and also in the capital at the East London Halloween skate jam, which was mental. We got to skate all day together with some stylish skaters. It’s so fun looking across the park, seeing all your bandmates on a board.

Then, when the jam began, we were in a chaotic sanctuary playing our songs to people listening and dancing, skaters throwing down the gnarliest trick, and other bands, Prodigal and Fanchon, killing their sets too. People tried shutting that down, even with fireworks! But the skate community kept everyone protected, and the atmosphere was electric!

In terms of shutdown, a couple of years ago, we attempted to put on a gig at a pub in a rural hometown of ours, and this town does not have regular alternative gigs at all. Long story short… over a hundred people turned up in this tiny pub, which they’d decided to put the rugby on, so it was swarming with pissed posh people already…

They told us to push our seats back if we wanted to play. Infuriated, we obliged only to keep the prospect of the gig happening. Eventually, the first band, Toast, started playing, and everyone was having a blast. This, except for the horrible bar manager who could not take such movement in his pub, even though we had let them know and prepared them as best we could for what happens when live rock music is played…

Long story short… once the gig got shut down by authorities, we had 100+ people who had all traveled to the remote location of this rural town standing in front of the venue, lit up by blue flashing lights. They were buzzing with fury and anticipation.

It was time for us to try and redeem the night. At this point, it was about 10-11 pm and we made some calls to mates with generators and speakers, so we could set up a pop-up party for our community that had been let down. A couple of us went with the friends who were bringing the speakers and generator to set up speedily, whilst two of us led the mighty convoy on foot to our secret location!

A night that turned devastating as it got dark was rectified by the rebelling and motivating community that we’ve found ourselves in from this band. The pop-up popped off with everybody up for the spontaneous adventure of redemption!

In terms of missing limbs…

Well, we started as a punk rock piece with an old guitarist and Hayden playing rhythm guitar. That was until he lost his left index finger on a wild night out. This could’ve been the most devastating news yet, but it made room for Munch, a local skater in the community, who had been asking about joining the band for a while.

Not wanting to cancel any gigs lined up, we sent him the set, and he learnt it ready for a gig next week. He was truly overqualified. After jamming with him and the previous lead shredder, not feeling it anymore, he took over lead guitar duty and transformed our sound with his math rock and Jimi Hendrix combination of styles. We wrote a whole new batch of songs, and this has been Chasing Dolls for the last few years that we’ve been releasing music and playing gigs!

When I lost my finger, it felt like this was a sign for the songs to be more motivating, and the stage performance became a lot more dramatic. Without the guitar, it meant I put more energy into the performance. All the movement and dancing is so cathartic and feels like I can express the mad qualities that are inside!

You’re heading into your debut EP era. What’s the overarching mood: divine chaos, emotional archaeology, or “please let us sleep after this”?

Those descriptions definitely all reflect the feelings around the EP. The EP is a collection of the first songs we wrote together over our first three years of jamming. These were years of chaos, desperation, intense feelings and then change.

We’re socially aware of the fact that our freedom of thought is trying to be stripped by the big media sites in however they choose to brainwash our humans, whether that’s choosing who the ‘villains’ are or the over-saturation of technology causing overstimulation.

What they can’t take, however, is our freedom of feeling. We embrace our reaction to it all. To all the awful wars and unjust in the world, to the desperation in our own lives. The EP represents our feelings toward it all. We hope people relate to our reaction and move to its rock n roll.

What surprised you the most while shaping the EP, a sound you didn’t expect to love, a mistake that became essential, or a direction that forced you to rethink who Chasing Dolls actually is?

We don’t need a massive pedalboard, but the sound can still be huge! Munch plays a lot of his tone live with just his tube amp (which Hayden found at a second-hand shop he used to work at for a bargain and carried it miles home on the train, leaving bruises all over him. That thing is crazy heavy, but so worth it!

He uses an overdrive as a boost and fuzz pedal. We found this kept all the feelings we resonated with in the rawness of the guitar. Theo just has a tuner live, because he settles into the subby and warm low end that beautifully roars on whatever bass head he can find.

Touring the full UK, Scotland included, sounds like equal parts triumph and frostbite. What’s your prediction: which city will love you instantly, and which will pretend you owe them an apology?

Alternative and open-minded cities like Brighton and Edinburgh will be well up for it. Any cities where the majority are right-wing, close-minded, England flag bearers may struggle with enjoying the show, but we hope the minorities in those cities find an escape from the easily brainwashed at our gigs!

You’ve recorded at Steel City, where giants like Bring Me and Pierce The Veil have left their ghosts. Did the studio feel like a blessing… or like someone else’s expectations breathing down your neck?

The studio definitely felt like a blessing as we really enjoyed the experience up in Sheffield. The ghosts of bands we grew up on felt inspiring because they definitely summoned ghosts of our younger selves, as some of those bands were why we wanted to get into a band in the first place.

The lyrics in ‘Cobweb’, one of the singles we recorded, are about motivation, and when recording a certain dramatic part. I (Hayden) recall taking myself to a place in my head, to a time in my past where I needed motivation, and it felt very cathartic, and I felt proud to be doing exactly what I dreamt and dream of.

What’s the long game for Chasing Dolls: longevity, reinvention, or leaving a sharp enough mark that people feel it even when you’re silent?

We’ve always seen Chasing Dolls as a long haul. We couldn’t live without playing together as a band. We love each other and the emotional anvil we’ve created for ourselves. We feel so much purpose in playing music together. Playing live is so much fun, and we’ve made so many friends in a creative, open-minded community that enjoys our music and the chaos that surrounds it!

We hope people enjoy hearing, watching us grow and our sound evolve as we and the world do!