Mark was lucky enough to get a chance to chat with New York based As Tall As Lions before their first sold-out show in London.

This is your first time in the UK, It's been quite a while coming, and a lot of people have been asking why its taken you so long?
Sean - Well, um its very kind of, I don't wanna say political, but you need connections to get over here. So recently we just had the pleasure of working with a management company over here, so they were kind of the ones who fell in love with the album, supported us as far as our vision of what we wanted to do, and were behind us saying 'you guys have to come over here. We'll hook you up with a tour, the whole 9 kinda thing' and they single handedly were the reason that we didn't go over before, and went over now.
Julio – Which is pretty endurable because the tour that we were on before, that Athlete tour, I mean it was a very nice sized tour. So to get here for the first time ever and play the rooms that we did, as I'm sure not many bands who come here for the first time get on a gigs like that.

Do you think those gigs were important for raising your profile? In terms of playing with a band like Athlete, who have got such a large UK following.
J – You know for us it was the first tour and we wanted to play in front of as many people as possible, so you know, I believe that as long as you're doing honest music, people will dig it, so it doesn't matter who we were playing to or the types of bands or things like that. As long as we got over here and gave a great tour like that.

Did you get a good response from the fans?
J – Yeah we were talking before, it seems like over here things are a bit more tame or reserved when it comes to the crowd expressing themselves...

So you've been on tour round the UK, what kind of food have you been eating? Petrol station food?
S – A lot of Marks & Spencer's...greasy food...

Pasties? Things like that?
J – Ah yeah I actually had one of those the other day, like a steak pasty thing? It was terrible...(laughs) it was really bad. Yeah like fish and chips, last night I had fried prawns with corn and peas. That was good.
S – Oh nice. How was that?
J – Oh my god, awesome.

So do you prefer being on the road or being in the studio?
S – Well you're talking to a bunch of guys who have been on the road for way too long right now...
J – I told Saen a couple of days ago that I'm itching to get in the studio and just put the mics up and stuff. For us it's not always the pressure like 'oh we've got to make an album now so lets start writing songs' you know? We are all songwriter and are always writing in between records, so when it comes time we all bring stuff to the table'. Me personally I'm itching to get back in there. Our plan was the get another album out as quickly as possible, to finish this one, tour for a little bit, then try and do another record quickly, but I don't think anyone saw us touring for 5 months straight so everyone's pretty exhausted.

So what are the plans for the future? More touring?
J – (Laughs) We fly home tomorrow. 2 days in New York, then a show Chicago...then I think, we have more shows? (laugher)
S – I don't know...