Two Door Cinema Club have played Glastonbury more times than they can remember but bassist Kevin Baird confesses there is huge ‘pressure’ on performers.
The indie icons are set to play the penultimate performance on the Other Stage on Sunday, June 30, marking their return to Worthy Farm for the first time in five years.
Kevin joked to Metro.co.uk that the band is the ‘perfect segue’ from Avril Lavigne into closing artist The National.
Having first topped charts in 2012, Two Door Cinema Club – consisting of Kevin, Sam Halliday, and frontman Alex Trimble – are firm favourites with over 9,700,000 monthly Spotify listeners.
But the 34-year-old bassist revealed that there is now a ‘pressure’ to push the limits of your performance in hopes of a viral moment.
‘Since we first played, things have gotten bigger. We’ve got more albums, we’ve had more success and there’s more expectations,’ Kevin began.
‘I think across the board there is a huge pressure for your Glastonbury performance to look incredible.’
He noted that this may link to artists turning down a slot due to the financial strain, alluding to Nadine Shah’s revelation that she had refused due to insufficient pay.
Kevin explained: ‘I think there is a pressure to deliver that iconic, shareable moment and I feel like last year that was Fred Again. It does lead to this ethos of “How do we engineer something just for Glastonbury?”‘
Fred Again unleashed a flashmob on the crowd last year while other viral moments include Stormzy’s Banksy vest or Lily Allen’s appearance with Olivia Rodrigo.
For Two Door Cinema Club, who formed and grew up in Bangor, Northern Ireland, Glastonbury was ‘maybe not as iconic’ to the trio as it felt to others on the music scene.
He compared it to the ‘big London show’ where artists will often bring out a guest or do something extra special to mark a larger gig or particularly momentous performance.
‘I do think there’s maybe an element of,’ Kevin started before pausing to consider his next words carefully. ‘There’s a little bit of egocentric spotlight-grabbing… which is fine.
‘Some people are into that but I think from our perspective, we’ve never really been comfortable with that. What we do in Southampton is what we’ll do at Glastonbury – in a nice way!
‘We do what we feel we’re good at and hopefully, other people agree. I think sometimes that spotlight-grabbing can get a little bit performative.’
He added: ‘Sometimes with the best intentions, but yeah.’
Kevin radiates laid-back energy but admitted he finds their own headlining tours to be more stressful than festival slots, even Glastonbury.
Unfazed by being the penultimate act for one of the main stages, he feels festivals give Two Door Cinema Club a ‘really nice opportunity’ to relive their early years.
The Undercover Martyn icon shared: ‘When we were like 20 and doing it for the first time, we had like 30 minutes or an hour or whatever, and we would just go bang, bang, bang, all the biggest songs you need to play.’
The band has recently released the single Happy Customers, moving away from the traditional album drop in favour of a less regimented recording plan.
Even this casual new music drop plays into the quiet confidence exuded by Two Door Cinema Club, who don’t feel the need to chase a certain genre or demographic.
‘I feel like we’ve never been like, “We’re an indie guitar band and that’s just who we are”,’ Kevin reasoned when discussing the pop-heavy sound of Glastonbury this year.
‘We’ve always tried to try new things and be different,’ he shares before grinning and adding: ‘With varying levels of success in terms of the experimentation.’
Complaints levied at the line-up this year included the lack of rock or alternative guitar-led bands and the pop-wave on the Pyramid Stage.
Kevin shared: ‘I think the weight of that problem of “no guitar bands”, falls on the guitar bands to do something that is commercially viable and that people want to hear. If there’s a new band out there and they’re the hottest thing, they’ll be there.
‘It shouldn’t be given to us for free just because that’s maybe more of the DNA of [a festival] It’s just nepotism and I don’t think that feels right.
‘Any festival that does that people are going to stop buying tickets because it’s clear that no one wants to see that.’
He concluded: ‘The onus is on us and people out there to do something interesting and different. We repeat the same things – as a genre, not necessarily talking about Two Door.
‘We have to offer something different, something better.’
Glastonbury Festival takes place at Worthy Farm from Wednesday, June 26, to Sunday, June 30.
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