ANOTHER NEW HORIZON FOR STAR ON CREATIVE MISSION
OLI SYKES has got the world at his feet – he is the lead singer of a worldfamous rock band, his clothing company has worked on projects for some of popular culture’s biggest names
and and he has just opened a new venue in his home city of Sheffield that will combine his love of live music, vegan food, tattoos and much more besides.
But while the 31-year-old frontman of Bring Me The Horizon admits he would never have been able to dream of the level of success he has had in both music and business, it has not been an easy journey despite being able to draw on seemingly boundless levels of creativity in different fields.
In 2014, Sykes revealed he had been to rehab after becoming addicted to the drug Ketamine – a situation that inspired his band’s breakthrough album
“My band wanted to kill me, my parents wanted to kill me and my brother wanted to kill me; everyone wanted to kill me, but they didn’t,” he said at the time. “They stood by me, they supported me through all of that and we wrote because of it.”
While in rehab, Sykes was prescribed with a different form of medication to help treat his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) – an important moment in helping him to understand his past behaviour and to receive treatment to help him control the condition.
He says while the diagnosis has helped change his life for the better, ADHD is part of who he is.
“About six to seven years ago, I went on medication,” he says. “I had a massive problem with drugs. Realising why I was doing it was quite liberating.
“Now I can be mindful of everything else. I’m more guarded about myself and what I do. It was really important to tackle it but at the same time, you find a lot of people with ADHD are really good at something or really creative.”
Sykes, who grew up in Stocksbridge to the north of Sheffield, says he struggled at school and eventually dropped out of college around the age of 16 after growing frustrated with the Graphic Design and Media course he was doing.
“When I was growing up, I was just annoying and couldn’t pay attention at school unless I liked the subject, if it was art or English,” he says. “But otherwise, the teachers just hated me. They thought I was being obnoxious or not listening. For anyone with ADHD or autism or Asperger’s that hasn’t been diagnosed, that can be a problem.”
Sykes had first been diagnosed with childhood ADHD when he was six, which he says did assist him despite his difficulties with education during his younger years. “I was fine growing up in the grand scheme of things. It is better if you have the diagnosis – you get that bit of tolerance. For me, that was quite freeing.”
With Bring Me The Horizon still in their early days and doing small gigs around Sheffield, after leaving college Oli decided to build on another creative passion of design and told his parents he wanted to start a clothing company. It turned out to be a wise decision. His parents lent him £500 and Drop Dead Clothing was born in his bedroom. He set up a PayPal account, website and began promoting the venture on social media site MySpace, as well as coming up with designs and tracking down printing companies.
With t-shirts piling up in his bedroom, he launched the company and was thrilled at its eventual reception.
“I don’t know why it did so well,” he says. “I got 20 orders on the first day and I just cried. My mum couldn’t believe it.”
The operation moved from Oli’s bedroom to the basement of the family house as sales continued to climb. “It got to the point where I was taking down to the Post Office and had to walk the 30 minutes down there three to four times a day,” says Sykes. “The Post Office hated me, the staff would spin round and walk out on their breaks when they saw me coming in! “Then the band started picking up and I was going on tour and my family took over to help. The bigger the band got, the more attention there was for anything the band were doing.” Sykes was not the only local success story starting to make it big at the time – Stocksbridge High School, which he attended, also counted two members of Arctic Monkeys, Alex Turner and Matt Helders, among its pupils and the pair were in the year above him at school.
With sales turnover for his clothing firm reaching £380,000 by the second year of operation and orders for his designs coming in from across the world, Oli’s brother Tom and his cousin Hannah became company employees and the firm moved to Step Business Centre in Deepcar before soon moving to larger premises in Sheffield.
Sykes then purchased Samuel Osborn House, a listed former industrial building in Sheffield’s trendy Kelham Island district, as the new base for the business.
The success of the company saw it approached by some of the biggest franchises in popular culture to create clothing for their fans. Sykes says it would be difficult for his teenage self to comprehend the success he has enjoyed in the fields of music and business.
“I would have never have dreamt it. We are about to release a collaboration with and have already done things with and
– these are some of my favourite things. If you had told me when I was younger, I would be about to work with Jurassic Park and Sonic, I just wouldn’t have believed you.”
Sykes, who is married to Brazilian model Alissa Salls, says he has never charted a path to success but has