Birmingham's A Promise To Forget talk ahead of debut album release - unsigned interview

They formed after meeting at Birmingham's Alderbrook School.

"We all gravitated towards each other at an early age," says drummer John Fleetwood.

"We all just played Fall Out Boy, Framing Hanley and Enter Shikari for years until we decided to write stuff together".

Along with John, band members include Tim Castle, Tom Bradley and Bradley Stinton.

"Our first ever show was in the basement in a bar in the centre of Birmingham. It was the dirtiest, worst place to possibly do live music but for us it was amazing, it's gone up from there really.

"Our second show was supporting Birmingham band Oceans Ate Alaska, who are now a world-wide touring artist signed by Fearless Record."

These humble beginnings has led to them supporting the likes of We Came As Romans, Against Me!, Marmozets, Creeper, SHVPES and many more.

"We've noticed that the higher up in industry you get, the nicer the guys are. When we played with We Came As Romans they were the nicest guys and they gave us a lot of advice and contacts in the industry that are still useful to us even today.

"We're heading for the same place so we can all give each other a hand getting there."

These support slots on bumper UK headline tours and all the publicity it's brought has given the band chance to put their songs to record.

A Promise To Forget have spent the last two years writing their debut album Dying To Live with time in the studio recording since October last year. They're expected to release their debut album in the summer.

"The album has been a long time coming. We wanted to write as many songs as we could and then sit down and really sift through them and try and find the best story to tell with the best songs. I think we had about 30 songs in total and whittled it down to 10, it was a hard task and took weeks.

"We spent months in pre-production and then headed into the studio with Timfy James from Hacktivist Engineering and Producing it. We then pumped hard work into tracking the album.

"There was a power issue in Timfy's studio and it fried his hard drive and we lost everything.

"We had to go back and do almost the whole thing again!"

"We salvaged a lot of the things that we'd already sent to and from each other like the drums so we didn't have to do the whole thing from scratch.

"Timfy has been nothing but helpful and accommodating towards us during this time and we wouldn't have been able to come up from this fall without those expertise.

"We properly finished the 'second' run-through at the beginning of February which is almost a year after we started doing pre-production.

"We're expecting the master tracks any day now, and once we have it in our hands we'll be starting a campaign for release. It'll be called Dying To Live and it deals with the notions of dealing with the dark aspects of life at a young age, along with the process of moving on and having courage."

A Promise To Forget are set to tour later this year to promote Dying To Live. They will also play support slots and appear at a host of UK summer festivals – yet to be announced.

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Becci Stanley