February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Lead guitarist Daniel Ryan credits the band’s ambitions — and one or two celebrity fans — for their success thus far.
“We played a few gigs around Dublin when we were very young,” Ryan told NIStudents.org. “We could have been playing [Dublin club] Whelan’s every Friday night, but you don’t get any satisfaction out of that.
Ryan said that the group’s main objective was to “break” outside the music scene.
“For us it was much more important to get a deal in the UK,” he said. “Obviously Ireland is important to us too, but we didn’t want to be just big here, we want to try to break properly in all the important territories.”
The Thrills can count the Rolling Stones, Coldplay and Morrissey among their high-prolfile admirers. Bono offered to carry their luggage — or at least, to hire some flunkies to do it. Morrissey’s support took a more practical form: he arranged to have them open for his pal, Steven Patrick, at the Royal Albert Hall. Morrissey also answers “loads of questions” from the band, mostly via fax, according to Daniel.
“He prefers to communicate [that way],” said Daniel. “He said he’d love to get a fax from us, so I’m going to try and send him one soon.”
Happily, The Thrills are not above dispensing a thrilling remark or two. The quintet, who have been working away steadily for nearly a decade, are decidedly underwhelmed by the current state of the Irish music scene.
“Louis Walsh has been embarrassing the country for the last six or seven years,” said Dan. “It’s about time we got something credible out there.” Sounds like fighting words to me. Let’s hope they don’t run into Samantha Mumba in a deserted alleyway . . .
Stay tuned for more Thrills in the weeks to come.