Lil from
Girl Group is on her way back to Liverpool for a pirate-themed birthday party. Earlier, she’d been by the sea in her hometown. It’s an oddly perfect image for a band who mix playful chaos with a very real mission: feminist pop you can shout along to.
Girl Group - made up of Lil, Katya, Mia, Maria and Thea - are one of the most exciting new bands on the Live at Leeds: In The City 2025 line-up. Known for their bratty hooks, bold politics and unfiltered lyrics, they’ve quickly gone from mates messing about to one of the most talked-about new acts on the DIY circuit.
From there, Girl Group became a weekly fixture, though they treated it as a side project until fairly recently. Now, they’re fully in it, with all five members singing and writing together, and Maria producing on top of that.
The band’s roots run deep. “A lot of us were raised around music and creativity,” Lil says. “I come from a musical family and grew up in a pub where there were always live bands. Mia’s mum took her to Roskilde as a kid, Thea’s a descendant of poets and songwriters, Maria’s mum was always playing Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon - and Katya, who didn’t come from a particularly musical background, developed a strong connection to Disney Channel, which actually comes in handy when writing a hook.”