Getting To Know: Sterling Press

West London’s own Sterling Press are back with their heaviest, most electrifying track yet-“Concrete Trampoline.” Fusing raw garage rock energy with dance-punk swagger, the four-piece are proving why they’re one of the most exciting names in the UK’s indie scene.

Hot on the heels of their debut EP Baby Steps, radio play on BBC Radio 1 & 6 Music, and a headline UK tour, the band is showing no signs of slowing down. Now, with their first-ever US shows at New Colossus Festival and a riff-heavy anthem that’s built to go down in rock history, Sterling Press are gearing up for their biggest year yet.

Concrete Trampoline has a raw, high-energy feel that blends rock and dance-punk influences. What was the creative process behind the track, and how did you land on its distinctive sound?

Concrete Trampoline came about through the combining of a lyric said in a writing session by our friend Rich Turvey and a riff we’ve had up our sleeve for a while. There’s basically two completely different demos of this song but as soon as we put together our favourite parts from each one, all the other pieces fell into place very quickly. It’s one of our favourites to play live, so capturing that energy and getting it across in the production was a major aim for the sound. 

You’ve mentioned wanting the song to end up on a “Top 100 Guitar Riffs” video—what inspired the riffs in Concrete Trampoline, and do you have any all-time favorite riffs that influenced you?

Unfortunately we haven’t been notified of our song being mentioned in a list yet but the riffs in 5/4 by Gorillaz and Moaning Lisa Smile by Wolf Alice were definitely catalysts in the creation of Concrete Trampoline. As kids trawling through live rock bands on Youtube and seeing Angus Young shredding in front of 200,000 people at River Plate (one of the most iconic rock riff moments of all time) was a fundamental influence on us all wanting to make the kind of music we do together. 

Sterling Press has been compared to early Blur and praised for its high-energy live shows. How has your experience as DJs and performing across UK dive bars shaped your sound and stage presence?

Playing all over the UK has taught us that you won’t ever have as much fun playing gigs if you’re not fully expressing yourself and being authentic to who you are when you’re on stage. We’re never thinking about what our stage presence should or shouldn’t be. We’re just happy to be up there because some people must like us and of course we’re going to do it while we still can. Being DJ’s during our time in Liverpool has definitely given us a bit of a confidence boost, knowing that there’s plenty of people out there who love the same things we do.

This release coincided with your first-ever shows in the U.S. at New Colossus Festival. How was the experience of playing in New York, and how did it feel to share your music with an international audience?

We feel incredibly grateful to have been able to play our music live overseas and especially in a city with such deep roots within the history of the arts and music culture as New York. It sounds cliche, but we truly had the time of our lives out there and although we’re still recovering from all the sleep deprivation, we’ll jump at any opportunity to get back out there. Concrete Trampoline seemed to go down really well with the New Yorkers but is merely a fraction of what we want to share with our international audience over the next few years. 

From your early days in Liverpool’s indie scene to now gaining attention from BBC Radio 1 and 6 Music, what have been the biggest lessons and surprises in your journey so far?

The biggest lesson we’ve learnt so far in our relatively short journey as a band is that everything must revolve around the music. It’s easy to get caught up in the chaos of social media, where promotion can quickly turn into a distraction. The pressure of insights and analytics can make you feel like you need to constantly be online, which pulls you away from the art itself. So, the biggest surprise for us has been realising that, as musicians, there’s only so much we can control, and we’d be doing ourselves a disservice if we tried to micromanage it all.