“We’ve been very lucky that our first couple of albums did really well in Ireland,” says O’Reilly on the phone from his homeland. “We released them ourselves independently. We took the decision to move to London to see if we could give it a go there, and creatively we wanted to change – we wanted to take ourselves out of our comfort zone, which the move became in a way. We got a record deal, a promotion deal and the crowds are growing, the tours have been growing, and we’re really excited about that. Even with Australia, we came there last year and were surprised by the crowd. We really enjoyed it and hopefully we can continue to build on that.”
The Coronas’ loyal fanbase had been substantially developing over seven years before they decided to relocate to the UK. Despite recent breakthroughs, there’s still a gap between their drawing power on home turf and international stages. Nevertheless, O’Reilly enjoys playing in any scenario.
“Luckily we’d been doing quite well [before the move],” he says. “We played our biggest headline show in February at the 3Arena in Dublin, which was 14,000 capacity and sold out, if that gives a bit of an indicator of the level of popularity here, which is so cool. We still need to expand, build and improve into other territories. Doing the smaller tours and smaller venues is great as a band, but it’s still great to be able to go back and do the big shows as well as travelling overseas. We get a kick out of doing both. They’re both quite different.
“When we started out, we were doing everything ourselves. We had our own music scene that we hit and spread out in through word of mouth, but we were of the opinion that someone would come and pluck us out of the air. I think it’s the same in any industry, though – you have to put yourself in the shop window. We had to put ourselves out at the bottom of a new ladder to climb up with London. I suppose it is unusual to be so big in one area and not the other, especially since we’re not really an Irish-sounding band. We wouldn’t consider our music Irish in that sense, really. But I guess it’s cool to have such a big, loyal fan base.”
While the UK and Ireland are geographical neighbours and historically intertwined, they essentially have separate and distinct music scenes. Along with altering the way they saw themselves as professionals, The Coronas took on the UK by altering the way they approached their music.
“The album before last [2011’s Closer To You], we wrote a lot of it in a place in Dingle in Ireland,” O’Reilly says. “Beautiful part of the world. We wrote most of our last album there. We were really happy with it. When we started writing for this album [2014’s The Long Way], we went down to Kerry County again in the same way with ten songs that we thought were quite good. When we moved to London, we started writing and reignited our ambitions. As I said, we saw the ladder and realised we were in a much bigger game.
“We took ourselves out of our comfort zones, pushed ourselves a bit harder and in the end only one of those ten songs we wrote in Ireland made it to the album. Most of the new songs came from when we were in London. I think that shows we improved our songwriting, seeing all these new tracks over the old songs.”
After one geographical change improved The Coronas’ creative palette, they’re now beginning to cast an eye overseas, with ambitions beyond the occasional tour.
“Even now we’re thinking, ‘Where do we take it for the next one? Where do we go past London?’ We live there now, it’s great, but maybe it’s time for a change. Maybe we should go to America. Even then, we’re hoping to take it to Europe next year. Our record deal with Universal means we can release the album in lots of different territories. We’re in two minds about what we should do with the next one, and how we approach that – that will take us on a bit and get us focused, change the way we perform even.”
BY THOMAS BRAND
