A quick chat with Highline

Congratulations on the release of ‘Staying Sane’! Can you tell us what the song’s about?

Staying Sane is about the sad but empowering realisation that you need to let someone go and take care of yourself despite them wanting and reaching out for your support after a breakup. It was written during a frustrating and confusing time mid last year when both my personal life and the world in general seemed to all be falling apart and is really more or less a reminder to put yourself first above all else when you need to.

Do you follow a specific approach when writing and recording your songs? 

Most of the songs we write start out as acoustic tracks on a voice memo or video before all of us build on top of it with different chord variations, structural changes and melodies. The lyrics tend to come fairly quickly and in bursts...Staying Sane was written more or less in a couple days lyric-wise. 

For this track, and the rest of the EP, we were fortunate enough to be able to take some time off and go away together to finish writing. For 3 days we polished our 5 new songs and it was a really collaborative process with everyone having a say on every chord, word, riff etc. It was cause for a few debates here and there, but all in all we work really well together and the writing process for this record was a really enjoyable experience. 

What songs do you have on repeat at the moment?

F-Pos classic, 

Coal Mine - Syd Arthur (a bit of an old one but we only just found it and it’s incredible), 

O.N.E - KGLW, 

Itch - Hockey Dad

What’s something we might not know about Highline?

When we play live, we normally hide a fifth band member in the back corner behind our bass player... Our keys don’t come from nowhere! 

Maybe in the future we’ll hide him behind someone smaller

What does the rest of 2021 have in store for you?

2021 we hope to do all of the things we never got to in 2020. Namely, we’re going to tour the East Coast later in the year after the release of our EP and take our music outside of Sydney. We have also been writing consistently over summer and are keen to get back into the studio at some stage down the track to work on our next project. 

We really are looking to break into that next level of Australian Music. Festival slots, regular gigs out of our home city etc. We’re excited to see where 2021 takes us.