A few weeks ago myself and Dave ventured out to The Balbairdie Pub in Bathgate to meet up with Mark Sharp and the Bicycle Thieves, Mark and Cameron. After the introductions and a pint getting thrown on me (cheers Dave) we got down to business.Â
The Beginning
Mark Sharp and the Bicycle Thieves, named after a 1940s film title which caught the eye while in HMV, formed around two years ago. However, before the band got together Mark performed as a solo artist, and still does on occasion. Music wasn't always on Mark's mind, as like a lot of Scottish kids, Mark's first love was football; first playing in local teams before moving to Falkirk FC (!!!) as a teenager.
All this changed about 10 years ago when he started singing at a house party and to the surprise of everyone, he was really good. The penny dropped, when Mark thought "I'm not half bad at this".. and the rest is history, he's been wrapped up in music ever since.
The close nit nature of West Lothian means that these guys have grown up together, and you can tell by the tight bond they have.Â
Fun Fact: Keyboardist Darren has met the King of Spain, regal.
The boys have already been selling out venues headlining from when they first started out, including King Tuts and those lucky enough to have tickets to their G2 gig on December 22nd are in for a treat with the release of the latest tune Warpaint.
We went on to talk in depth about supporting Lewis Capaldi this year at Barrowlands and learned who the only person to ever steal a star from the venue's high ceiling! (you have 3 guesses, and no, not Mark!). In classic silly Lewis fashion, Mark revealed that he was asked to play via snap chat. How modern!Â
We went on to discuss musical influences and how they started up. First songs they learnt on guitar, which created quite the discussion as we all agreed learning only gets interesting when you can actually play a song. As you can see they both started in completely different places.
Cameron: Ode to Joy Mark: Oasis - Talk tonightÂ
Musical influencesÂ
Listening to the bands singles you can see that they are influenced by a wide range of genres, they go from dance songs that get the crowd going like Firewater to bringing it down to almost ballad songs like Last train to Nowhere. Mark admitted when growing up he was partial to a bit of 90s dance and RnB music and was keen to stress he didn't want to just be an acoustic singer.
The song-writing within the group is collaborative, once Mark has finished off the lyrics he takes them to the band where they start out as an acoustic track, developing them till they get where they are today.
Everyone has different influence on the direction of the songs which is probably why they have the ability to make every song sound original.
Favourite Scottish bands of 2018
Cam: WUH OH
Mark: Beta Waves (Also my favourite this year) and Retro Video Club
Dream Venue + SupportCausing the usual amount of arguments we asked Cam and Mark which would be their dream venue and who they would have supporting them. Cammy knew straight away he wanted Brian Jonestown Massacre saying the documentary DIG was a must watch for everyone. Then after some deliberation went with The Carpenters
Mark spent a bit more time deliberating, stating King Tuts is a dream to sell out first time, originally he said playing with Lewis Capaldi and The Snuts is always incredible. In fact, one of their first gigs they had both Lewis and The Snuts supporting them. So I made him go again, with him finally settling on Otis Redding and The Beautiful South.Â
The Karaoke started up with a woman singing an interesting rendition of Let it go - Frozen, so we moved on to quick fire questions. Look out for our second instalment with the boys in the new year...did we get up for a sing-a-long...? [dramatic cliffhanger]