Hello, this is Perth calling

Band are part of a thriving scene in Fair City and named after a Stanley Baxter sketch.. so what’s not to like?

NAMED after a Stanley Baxter sketch, Perth-band Parliamo brand their sound “underground pop”.

As well as being one of Scotland’s best live acts, they have caught the ear of UK-wide radio with tunes like Weekend, Youth and latest song End to End.

The band, all aged from 18 to 20, are singer Jack Dailly, guitarist Finn FreeburnMorrison, guitarist Calum Simpson, drummer Ben France and bassist Fraser Nicholson.

Jack, who formed the band with Finn when they were in their mid-teens, gives us the Parliamo chat.

How did the band get together?

Finn and I met briefly at an open mic night in Perth and became friends on social media when I was 14 and he was 15.

It became apparent that we had very similar interests and taste in music, so I asked him if he wanted to start a band.

The first time we met up, we had written a song within five minutes. The next time we met we wrote a song called Lucy, which we demoed on GarageBand on my phone and sent to various labels and management companies that

we found on CD inlays. It was a long shot but, sure enough, in 2016 an artist management company from London got back to us saying they loved the song and they wanted us to come down to London and record it in their studio.

So we did, along with our other song Weekend.

We were on top of the world but we knew we had to start playing live shows if we wanted to get anywhere.

I knew Calum, the lead guitarist, after being in the same music class as him so I asked him to join the band and he was all for it.

Finn went to school with Ben, the drummer, and Fraser, the bassist. Each person brought their own thing to the band and the chemistry just worked – so we found our sound pretty quickly.

Glasgow, Edinburgh and Fife have had their moment – is it Perth’s turn to be Scotland’s musical centre?

Perth has lots of great young bands and artists at the moment, such as The Sandemans and Whitey.

Arguably Perth’s best music venue, The Green Room closed its doors recently, which is very worrying.

Perth has a real lack of venues and is in real danger of killing its own music scene dead, which would be a tragedy. The council needs to take a serious look at this problem if it wants Perth’s music scene to thrive.

Are you Stanley Baxter fans?

We took the name from Stanley Baxter’s Parliamo Glasgow sketch. Parliamo meaning “to speak”, or in this case, “patter”. My English teacher showed me the sketch when I was in S3 and I’ve loved it ever since.

Does it feel like a golden age for Scottish music?

Scotland is a real hotbed of young guitar bands right now, it’s incredible. We’re honoured to be a part of it.

I’m pretty sure about 50 per cent of the Scottish youth are in guitar bands. The other 50 per cent are DJ’s. It’s definitely a golden age for Scottish music. The likes of The Snuts, Gerry Cinnamon and Lewis Capaldi have us on the world stage, and it’s only just the beginning.

This year you’ve been in London. How has that gone?

Our first gig in London was in February and we’ve been down twice since. Each time, we’ve been received really well down there and we’ve thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

We’re new down there so we have to win the crowds over. It’s nice to see people get into it throughout the gig though, to the point where they’re absolutely going for it by the end. The 12-hour Megabus