interview with THEIA
Have any of you played in other bands? Yes all of us came from different backgrounds and different bands. We all grew up in Rome and the nearby area and we experimented through the years with several projects before coming all together in 2016.
How is it that you started playing music? Paolo: I personally started at the age of 12, my best friend picked up his first guitar lessons and one day we were watching the famous Live in Tokio from Dream Theater and I immediately fell in love with that music and especially with the drums. The rest is history :)
What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you?
Paolo Conte 28, drums
Jacopo Pesciarelli 25, vocals
Pietro Finzi Vita 25, guitars
Nicolò di Lernia 28, guitars
Matteo Dondi 28, bass
Have you had other previous members? Yes we changed lineup in these two years, in particular two drummers and one vocalist.
Did you make music even when you were young? Yeswe all made music from an early age experimenting with our first bands.
Where are you from? We all are from Italy, Rome is our home base.
What year did the band form? Theia started in 2015.
What's your style of genre? We like to call it "progressive djent" to define a certain style that has been very popular amongst lots of bands throughout the world in the latest years, although with the new album and the new lineup we certainly can feel the Progress side of our music feeling stronger.
What inspires you? Everything! Art, beauty, humans in their daily challenges and struggles, and of course we lookup to so many great bands and musicians that continuously inspire us to play this music at our best more and more each day.
How often and where do you reherse? We usually have a full band rehearsal once a week, also we individually practice our music during the week.
How have developed since you started with the music? We immensely improved since we started playing together, both individually and as a whole. Our friendship grew as well in this past year and we are very close to one another.
Do you have other interests of work outside the band? Yes some of us have other side projects going on and daily jobs.
Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that? Yes we are looking for a label at the moment to work with releasing our new full length album that we are producing ourselves.
What made you decide to make this music? What unites all of us is the passion for this style of music that has inspired a whole generations of musicians in the last 10 years or so, although we like and play different genres and have a genuine love for all the modern music scene.
What are your songs about? Human nature and the modern world issues.
Who does the composing and writes the lyrics? For the new album Jacopo and Paolo are going to write the lyrics.
Do you start with the music or the lyrics? We definitely compose our songs starting with the music, only when everything sounds perfect instrumentally we write the vocal parts with lyrics.
Do you compose in a certain inviroment? We have our studioand rehearsal room in Matteo's lab, where he also makes all of our guitars and basses.
What are the least and most people to attend one of your gigs? On our first tour it varied from a few dozens to a couple hunded people
What ages are most of your concert attendants? Usually the majority are guys/girls from 15 to 35 years old.
Do you always play the same songs live, or do you vary? Up until now on tour we played a very specific set list, but we are going to vary for that for the next shows when we will be including a few of our best songs from the new album.
Do you have a regular place you play live often? Not particularly, but we happened to play more in our local places in Rome for obvious reasons :)
What was your first gig like? Our fist gig on our first tour was in Prague, we were very excited and a bit nervous because that was the first date of the tour, but in the end we managed to play at our best and we had lots of fun with our friends in Prague and with our tourmates Anima Tempo, who are now like brothers to us.
What was your latest gig? We played our last show of the Caged in Europe tour with Anima Tempo at the Cycle Club in Florence
Have you had to cancel a gig? Unfortunately we had to cancel one show in Turin on the last tour due to some health and practical issues.
Where have you played live this year?
We are currently booking our national and international gigs at the moment, soon we will release the dates on our Facebook page.
Where do you plan to gig the comming year?
We're planning to travel across the Northern Europe, especially the united kingdom.
When did you start to sell merchandise, and what do you have for sale?
We started 2 years ago. Currently there are T-shirts and stickers available for our merch.
Where can people buy your merchandise?
We are working on a new website with all the merch info, is coming really soon!
What do you think about people downloading music instead of buying records now a days?
It's very common to download music, but nowdays services like Spotify have surpassed the piracy problem I think.
How do you think the music industry have changed because of this? I think that more people have access to more music, and that's is a beautiful thing overall.
What do you think of my work? We all think you are a talented young blogger, keep it going!
How do you think and know that this interview will help you in the music business? Maybe the curious will have the occasion to find out more about who we are and what we do, as any artist's job is to reach as many souls as he can.
Do you have any role models or idols? Yes MANY, many bands inspire us every day, guys like Animals as Leaders, Periphery, Architects and Monuments to name a few... and of course the mighty 'shuggah
Why do you think that they exist? To help the world transition in a new era for modern progressive music.
Is it easier to find inspiration from older bands, or bands that are more active today? Older band are the basics and still inspire us all, newer bands are responsible to set the bar higher and keep growing so we can all benefit from their art.
What have been your biggest obstacles? I'd say our country so far, and that's mainly because we play a genre which is not very popular through our national metal community, but it's continuously growing and that makes us hopeful for the future.
What advice would you give other bands or artists? Play what you love regardless of what other people think is cool or "trendy", strive to be a little better each day and live in the moment!
How do you get psyched for a gig? We always get really excited each time we are getting close to play live, even after all these years. We just visualize how we are going to project our energy and how the crowd will reapond and it feels amazing right away!
Do you have any new material? Not yet, we are writing the new album IN THIS VERY MOMENT, it's going to be released in the following month
How can people reach you?
Through our Facebook page and our Instagram
Fb.com/OFFICIALTHEIA
@theiaband on IG
/OFFICIALTHEIA on Youtube
And @officialtheia on Twitter
What are your plans for the future? First of all we need to finish this record, find a label in the meantime and tour as much as we can in 2017!
Do you have something to add? Thank you to every person who is genuinely curious about what we do, we owe it all to you! Also thanks Robex for this beautiful interview!
