Greywind: "You need to do what you want, you only live once"

Greywind seem like a fairy tale. After years of dreaming, looking up at others and trying to find their way, the brother and sister duo from Killarney, Ireland uploaded their first finished song to SoundCloud one evening. The track, still very much a demo, got played on BBC Radio One courtesy of Zane Lowe and the offers started rolling in. The pair didn't expect anything - "we were just posting the song for ourselves" - but next thing they knew, they were in Texas with Jason Perry working on their debut album. Taking just ten songs with them, Greywind don't waste time on the unnecessary. "We're not a band who'll write sixty songs and narrow it down, if we like something, we stick with it." With the finished record in their back pocket, 2016 saw them hit the stage for the first time. By the end of it, they'd played sixteen full band shows with every single one, from Slam Dunk to supporting Moose Blood, Young Guns and Thrice, mattering. "It doesn't make sense that our thirteenth and fourteenth shows were at Reading & Leeds. I think about that every day, and it doesn't make sense to me," admits Steph. "But I'll take it." Debut album ‘Afterthoughts' is every bit as fantastical as the band's story so far. Bold colours, wide eyes taking everything in and a sense of glorious escape underpin the vibrant positivity and constant sense of marvel that Greywind dance under. Today Steph O' Sullivan isn't speaking from a picturesque cottage in the clearing of a wood, but home is surrounded by mountains, lakes and, down the road, a castle. "It does look a bit like a Disney movie here, which I like," she beams. Despite the abundance of picturesque surroundings, for two kids who grew up idolising the likes of My Chemical Romance and Thrice, it wasn't ideal. Killarney, I love you, but you're bringing me down. The nearest city, Cork, is an hour and a half away while Dublin, the closest thing the pair have to a nearby scene, is a four-hour drive. It's why Greywind is just Paul and Steph. "We struggled for so long to find other band members. Eventually, we just decided to do it ourselves. "We always had bones of songs, but because we never had the full band, we never finished them. That was what was holding us back; that's why we always wanted a band so bad because we felt like we couldn't finish a song because we didn't have a drummer or whatever. We just always had that mindset. As soon as we stopped depending on other people though it all fell into place and ‘Afterthoughts' was born."