INTERVIEW WITH MARCIA FROM

London four-piece, The Skints, have clawed their way up from the depths of the underground punk/ska scene to a unique fixture on the global reggae stage Drawing influences as wide as soul, pop, grime and hardcore, their original brand of “tropical punk” has seen them evolve in to one of the hardest working and most respected bands in UK music

Formed while at school in 2007, The Skints hail from the Waltham Forest and Redbridge boroughs of North East London, and they cut their teeth in London’s underground punk scene before venturing out of the M25 to play their first selfbooked DIY venture and embark on a heaving touring regime across the nation’s “toilet venue” circuit

The band have just coheadlined a 7 date UK tour with Gentleman's Dub Club We caught up with Marcia ahead of the tour

The Skints are headlining out on a UK Co-Headlining tour this Saturday with Gentleman’s Dub Club. How did that come about?

We’ve been friends with those guys for a long time actually and something like this has been on the cards for ages Like we’ve been wanting to do something and this is just kind of perfect you know? We wanted to start the year off with something fun and meant we can do those great venues too, but also it just makes a really great night, I think, we both bands want to do headline long sets and it just worked out really well

We’ve been doing a lot of work together as well through Covid and it just kind of felt like an organic thing to come about

You are playing some great venues, Nottingham Rock City for example and two nights in Bristol I’ve just checked and Bristol is sold out. Yeah both sold out, I’m really excited about that. We headlined The Marble Factory a year ago and it was fantastic and that night sold, and it’s really great to come back and play the same venue again, twice and its sold out.

Speaking of venues, you’ve played pretty consistently live over recording so in terms of the venues you’ve played in around the world from tiny little pubs and clubs to huge festivals. What do you prefer, do you prefer the smaller venues or are you happy wherever you play?

To me there's something in both Personally I like playing on the big stage because, you know, I like the sound to be good, I’m a bit of an audiophile so for sound I like playing the bigger venues and I like playing to a bigger crowd I feel a bit more secure and confident in those situations, if the crowd is small you feel a bit more on the spot But when we do those big stages for two months you really start to miss the small shows

Something I love about our band is we’ve managed to do a good mix of both over our whole career Just the beginning of last year actually as we were coming out of Covid we were supposed to do some of those limited ticket shows It kept getting pushed back and back over the two years of the pandemic and it grew so disappointing because we kept having to tell people that we couldn’t play those shows because the rules kept changing Until eventually we just decided to turn it into a proper show and sell a few more tickets but we still did small venues We did the Cavern in Exeter which is somewhere we haven’t played in over a decade, I think The stage didn’t physically fit all my stuff, instruments I feel like those are the shows that the audience remember, when they look back on seeing a band they remember those more that when they see you at a bigger venue