PropertyOfZack had the chance to interview our good friend Chris in Hostage Calm not too long ago and were glad to finally be posting it. Chris and I discussed the band’s recent touring, their 2010 self-titled release, new songs, and more. Read up and enjoy!

For the record, could you state your name and role in Hostage Calm?
I’m Chris, and I sing for Hostage Calm.
 
Just a few nights ago, you guys played a special one-off show with Koji in Brooklyn on his Resolve Tour. How was it switching it up for a bit after the Daytrader tour?
It was cool. We haven’t played New York City in a while. We haven’t played Brooklyn since like May of last year. We’ve been playing more outside of New York shows, so it’s cool to actually play in the City and it’s cool to play with Koji and to just see a bunch of friends we hadn’t seen in a long time.
 
The past week or so before the band was doing a brief tour with Daytrader. How were those dates?
It was fun. They’re definitely awesome dudes. We really got to know them in a short time, which was awesome. They were definitely killing it every night. We played some new places that we had never played before. We had never played Buffalo before, so it was cool to play there. We went to the Rock N’ Roll Hall Of Fame and that was fun too. We had a generally fun time and it was nice to be out for a short little stint. It was cool to just go out and be back in ten days.
POZ: Were fans pretty into your set?
Chris: Yeah, I think so. I thought that we did pretty well on the tour.
 
Before that, the band headed overseas with Daylight and Basement. How did the UK and Europe treat you?
The treatment there was pretty sick. It’s a lot different from touring in the US. A lot of things are set up for you because you’re coming from a different country and you don’t know anything about languages and visas and all of that type of stuff. It’s a totally different experience having a driver and shit like that versus touring the US doing everything yourself. All the bands, Daylight and Basement, played awesome every night. A lot of good shows. Central Europe went better than I expected, and we just had a great time.
 
Would you like to get back overseas again sooner than later?
Yeah, I think we’re just figuring out if we can put out records over there before we go back, but I definitely think it’s something we want to do again. I definitely want to do a more robust Central European tour. I think we’ll do well if we do something like that.
 
Is it nice to be playing all of these shows with fellow Run For Cover Records bands?
It’s awesome to see that there’s a Run For Cover scene that you go across the ocean and there are people who only listen to those bands, whereas probably five or six years ago in the US it was sort of an offshoot of various punk or hardcore scenes. It was cool to see there was this own group of people who particularly follow that style and take it as their own community and scene. It was pretty cool.
 
These dates are obviously all in support of the band’s self-titled 2010 release. How are the songs doing in a live setting with fans?
Yeah, I’d say so. Since we recorded more of a polished and more challenging album, I think we spent a lot more time making sure we were going to kill it when we went out to play, so I think it goes over better than our old stuff just because we’ve put that focus in. I think that when you record an album and you do make an effort to polish it, it raises the bar for you and you know you need to go out and nail it and get all of the guitar tones and backup harmonies and stuff.
 
How has the overall reception to the record been?
We were really surprised to the reception. We really thought people were like going to fucking hate it. We didn’t really know what to expect, but we did it anyway because it was what we liked. People ended up liking it a lot more than our old stuff. A lot of people stayed with us, but I’m sure there are some who aren’t into it. We’ve definitely gained a lot of new fans in the US. I think on this last European tour that we were definitely introducing ourselves to a lot of people for the first time. It’ll be interesting to see how we do when we go back there. The self-titled definitely garnered a lot more attention to the band even though it’s been controversial being so musical or whatever or not playing to the hardcore/punk necessities that more bands seem to focus on.
 
It’s been out a while now, but can you just discuss how the writing process different from your last record?
I don’t know how different the actual writing process was. Some of the stuff we even started writing while we were recording the last record. We had a lot of free time in the studio and we were writing those songs as we were recording the much more punk/hardcore album. We do it all different ways; we sometimes start with vocals or guitar. It’s always good to vary it up and to have a different approach throughout the album. Even if you stumble across new things as you’re doing it, it creates new things that aren’t intentional. We screwed around in the studio and then went home and really worked on it and had a long time where we had everything written. I went to work in Guatemala for a while and I came back and then I had a lot more lyrics.
 
Hostage Calm will be taking a month or so off before playing a few dates with Lemuria and then Hot Water Music, Fireworks, and Make Do And Mend. How much are you looking forward to playing with Hot Water?
I’m pretty excited for that tour. Playing with Hot Water Music is definitely a dream come true. We’re playing the second and third show of that tour with Anti-Flag and Lemuria, and that’s awesome. I remember seeing Anti-Flag when I was fucking thirteen or fourteen and being so stoked. It’s definitely cool to see all these bands that are big staples of modern punk who are really large influential bands. They might not influence various things that we’ve done, but they’ve influenced punk so much that there are just subtle things that we probably do that we don’t even know about that started with bands like that.
 
Could we see anything differ in the set for those dates?
We may be going out with a backing acoustic guitar player. Other than that we’re just going to play our songs and destroy it.
 
It’s been confirmed that Hostage Calm will be releasing a new single in July under a Run For Cover comp. Has that been recorded yet?
Yeah, that was recorded very recently. It’s being mixed and it’ll be sent to master. We’ve been in and out of the studio at various points between tours. We toured in January and February, went to Europe, and went right back into the studio, went home, went back to the studio, went out on tour. We’ve been in and out a lot. All that stuff is pretty much finished now. It didn’t take that long, but we did it sporadically.
POZ: How many new songs do you guys have?
Chris: We have a lot of new songs, but the ones we recorded are just a single, a b-side, a RFC comp song, a single that was a rerecording of a song from the self-titled album. We have over twenty new songs written that we’ve done pre-production on, but how those songs will come out have yet to be decided.
 
Should we expect another release this summer?
Well, the single for sure and the comp probably. Outside of that, I would say that that’s up in the air. Definitely look for those coming up.
POZ: Would you like to keep working on those new songs?
Chris: Yeah, we’ll probably pump out more and pick the best ones. When we were younger we didn’t know how to do that. On our self-titled we actually cut one of the songs and added a b-side and I think that really made a difference. That approach lets you to choose your best material.
 
It was also confirmed that you guys will be doing a tour with Senses Fail. Will that be a US tour?
I think they’re just going to be sporadic dates across the eastern Seaborg at times. We’re sort of not doing any major long touring for a little bit, but for the next couple months we’re doing short runs and one-offs. We’re practicing a lot and just doing the weekend warrior vibe.
 
Are you looking into the future yet for longer tours?
I can’t say for all of the summer, but definitely in the fall we’ll be hitting it pretty hard. We’ll have more announcements in the future when we have a few more things solidly worked out.
 
Thanks so much for your time, is there anything else you’d like to add or that we should be on the lookout for?
Look out for the single, look out for the comp tracks, and come to a track.