For the love of rock

In the midst of what appears to be a flourishing period for rock bands in Chennai, an exciting bunch of five have come together from colleges across the city to make the most of the current trend. Their acoustic rock band, Pills and Pillows, is the toast of cultural fests across India. Owing to the amazing reception they have enjoyed, they are working on their first album, which is all set to release in the next two months. Of the five, Stevie Joe and Sam are from Madras Christian College, while Noel is from Loyola, Simona from SRM and Jehoshaphat is from Mar Gregorios.

“I’m very happy that best friends, who’ve been singing together for over 11 years, are able to start something exciting,” starts Stevie, who takes care of vocals and guitar. Elaborating on what instigated them to start their own band, he says, “When we were a part of the metalcore band ‘One Sleepless Night’, we had this urge to do mellow happy-go-lucky songs. That’s how ‘Pills and Pillows’ happened.” Speaking about their participation in cultural fests, he says, “We’ve won in every single college and band hunt we’ve competed so far — Deepwoods, Octavia, Srishti, Christ University and IIM-Bangalore are some of the colleges that gave us a resounding welcome!”

This encouraged them to work on an interesting album. Speaking about this, he excitedly says, “We’ve been recording and working day and night, on our yet-to-be named debut album. As it has acoustic guitar-infused ear-soothing duets and ballads, I can assure you that rock fans are in for a treat. We’re planning to release it by the end of May/beginning of June this year!”

Speaking about their future aspirations, Stevie says, “Though we have a decent fan base in Facebook and Instagram, we would like to expand our social media reach. Once we establish this, our target would be to sign for a record label. I’m sure that we have the skill sets to achieve this,” he signs off.