SYTERIA

“We released three singles last year because when we released Reflection, it was the worst time in the world. It was the 21st of February 2020. The lockdown was a month after,” she says. “We went out to tour in the UK, as usual. And we were doing lots of gigs. Because of COVID happening, people were buying tickets and not coming because they were too frightened. And it was like, wow, this is amazing. We had to cancel the last two or three I think, because the clubs said we’ve been asked to close down. So, it was just horrible. So that was a lesson for us. We had just spent all this money on PR and on magazine advertisements, and the usual things you do when you bring out a new album. And all these interviews that nobody ever heard,” explains Jackie.

The band’s experiences from their latest album resulted in a change of thought heading into their upcoming release. “We decided we would do singles in case it happened again,” explains Jackie. “So, we did It Hit Me, Monsters and Pause For Peace, and another one. Then we thought, well, we’ve got four songs done already. We’ll just go in the studio, and we went in this March and recorded the other eight.”

As a band, Syteria’s approach towards songwriting has evolved with each album. “The first couple of albums, I guess I generally wrote most of the songs myself because the reason I put the band together in the first place was because I had so many songs that we weren’t doing with Girlschool. I thought well, I might as well showcase this element to my personality, this pop/rock, punk stuff on the other side. The first album Rant O Bot was mostly my songs. I think there was one of Keira’s and me and Julia wrote one together. Then Reflection, Julia put one forward and Pablo put one forward. So again, there’s ten of mine and two for the band.”

This time around Jackie had two albums to write for simultaneously. “This time, obviously I was writing a lot with Girlschool for that album as well. So, I said