Yours Truly: "We're excited for the future again"

After a tumultuous few years that they may not have returned from, YOURS TRULY are back and fighting fit.

Words: Ali Shutler.
Photos: Frances Beach.

"I heard you say 'nothing can last forever'," snarls Mikaila Delgado on 'Back 2 U', the opening track to Yours Truly's vicious new album 'Toxic'. And for a while, it did seem like the end was rapidly approaching for Yours Truly. The band had built a loyal following with their debut album 'Self Care', a collection of empathetic pop-punk bangers, while the follow-up EP 'Is This What I Look Like?' saw the band broaden their musical horizons and start flirting with harsh truths.

The following year, guitarist Lachlan Cronin and drummer Brad Cronan left the band, leaving Mikaila and guitarist Teddie Winder-Haron wondering if they could carry on. "We definitely had conversations about the future. We didn't know what Yours Truly would look like; we didn't know what people would think. We didn't know what to do," Mikaila explains. So, the pair avoided those uncomfortable questions and started living life after years on the road. Eventually, they both decided that Yours Truly meant too much to them to just walk away. "We decided to do one more record and see what happened."

The result is 'Toxic', a swaggering, snarling album that takes Yours Truly far beyond the simple pop-punk tag. "In the past, every record has been us chasing a specific vision," says Mikaila. "With 'Toxic' though, all we wanted to do was create the best record Yours Truly could make and maybe figure out what the band was now at the same time."

"I didn't want to just make what people expected the next Yours Truly record to be," she continues, with 'Toxic' taking inspiration from DnB, pop, and screaming post-hardcore. "There's definitely a sense of freedom across this album."