“We’re gonna get so much revenge”: Inside the tenacious return of Greywind

Most bands give it about two years or so after their debut album to release a follow-up. Greywind waited almost nine. The past decade was blighted by a streak of bad luck that seems impossible to make up, starting before 2017’s Afterthoughts was even completed.

First, the major label who picked them up decided that, apparently, the lack of monetary gains from signing them was reason enough to cut them loose, even though they hadn’t even released any music. After promising to release it on their own label, their management began dragging their feet and eventually dropped them too. That same day, they lost their agent. Then, there was a fraught legal battle to buy back the rights to Afterthoughts, in which time they resolutely avoided releasing anything new.

Siblings Steph and Paul O’Sullivan might seem in high spirits when they dial in with K! on the eve of the release of new album Severed Heart City, but understandably, they hadn’t always been in such a sunny mood.

“I couldn’t even listen to music for a while,” admits Steph of the tumultuous aftermath of making Afterthoughts. “I was in such a deep depression, I couldn’t get out of bed.”

Although the snatching of their dreams right out their hands took Steph’s spark for a while, guitarist Paul was lit on fire. “I was like, ‘Drop me again. We're gonna get so much revenge,’” he recalls. “I’m the type of person where if you cut off my left arm, I’d be like, ‘At least have my right.’”

“We’re like a yin yang,” adds Steph. “I think that’s why we’re still growing. That’s why we never quit. One can’t survive without the other.”

After all, Greywind had always felt like underdogs. Steph and Paul had grown up as the only emos in their hometown of Killarney on the south-west corner of Ireland, bullied for their music taste and forming Greywind as a duo simply because they couldn’t find anyone else to join. They thought they’d never escape their hometown. Even two years ago, they were told they wouldn’t get to tour the U.S. – but they’ve now done so twice. “I love being the underdogs. I love proving people wrong,” says Paul.

In the end, the traditional music industry path need not confine them. They found more support and love on the internet than from any executive in a suit, their fanbase blossoming organically after they went viral on TikTok during lockdown.

“I don't think they even realise the impact they've had on my mental health,” says Steph. “I know they always say, ‘You've helped me. And I love when people say that, because I'm like, ‘You've helped me as well.’”

No matter how foul a hand they had, quitting was never an option. “We wouldn't have gone through all of that stuff just to then quit. I feel like that would be disrespectful to ourselves and to our fans.”

For Greywind, social media affords them freedom. They’re in control, they create how they want, and there’s no walls between them and their fans. Crucially, they require nobody’s permission to exist or sound however they choose.

“Some bands complain about social media and they’re like, ‘I have to dance for the algorithm, or I have to be an influencer now,’ but me and Steph are sitting there like ‘This is the best time, the easiest time in the history of music, to be discovered as a band,’” argues Paul.

With their 2024 EP Antidote, Steph began to rehabilitate her relationship with music. Then, as the siblings dived into writing Severed Heart City, she found her way back to a place of confidence. Sonically, it’s a love letter to emo, laden with giant choruses, undiluted emotional truths and overwhelming burst of catharsis, but it’s also a portal to a world that they’ve always been building. Eagle-eyed fans might notice the figure on the cover of Antidote is stood outside the outskirts of a city, with a bridge leading inside its walls – this is what that bridge has been leading to.

“We want it to be a place where it's okay to be sad,” says Steph. “We want people to know that, hey, we're sad too. I think people look at bands and artists like living the dream and everything's perfect, and we wanted to be like, ‘No, we're suffering too.’”

Indeed, there’s very little room for them to hide when Steph is emptying out her emotions as bluntly as she does. On Happy, for example, she sings: ‘I’m not happy / Feel like jumping off a bridge / With my legs tied to bricks.’ Once upon a time, their team might have called them and warned them off being so dark and direct, lest they not get played on the radio. But now, nothing’s more important to them than stigma-dispelling candour.

“We just pour our hearts out,” says Paul. “I think these songs are proof that this is a band that is being completely authentic.”

Severed Heart City is never supposed to be a permanent home. The only bridge out is through hope, and on the glistening, anthemic closer Cope In The Coma, they take you cruising down the highway out of the city towards brighter things.

“That’s been our Greywind way of saying, ‘Never give up’ for years,” says Paul, adding that it almost became the album’s title. “We felt like we've been in a coma, just waiting to wake up, waiting for everything to click back into place again.”

If they were comatose before, they’re more alive than ever now. Given they’d barely played live when they were dropped by their label, management and agent, all they want is to get out, perform and celebrate finally bringing their vision to life as they’ve always wanted it.

“We've always known since day one what we are, but we're now with this album, we are showing every side of us,” Paul concludes. “It shows the love of genre and the love of this music. We’re playing everything we dreamed of creating.”

Severed Heart City is out now via FLG.

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