Review Fix chats with Winter Hotel’s Charlie Wignall, who discusses the band’s origin and goals for 2020.
Review Fix: How did the project start?
Charlie Wignall: The band started when Liam (guitarist) and Warren (vocals) met in a pub in Bangor, UK in 2017. Once they realised they were both musicians they immediately started bouncing ideas off each other, and then brought on 3 more members to begin ‘Winter Hotel’. The band has since gone through a couple of lineup changes, introducing myself filling in for drums and James on bass.
Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?
Wignall: Songs will start off by both Liam and Warren sharing lyrics and writing pretty much a 50/50 split of all the band’s lyrics. Liam will then lay down some chords for both me and James to follow and work on. We have a complete mixture of influences from each member of the band, which results in a blend of genres of metal, which is what we believe makes our sound unique.
Review Fix: What’s your standout song? How was it written?
Wignall: Our stand out song would probably be ‘Exit Strategy’, it’s the first song Liam and Warren wrote and performed together and has stayed with us since. It tends to be quite a crowd pleaser too, being one of our heavier songs.
Review Fix: What are your goals for 2020?
Wignall: With not much of the year left and COVID-19 still kicking about, our only goal is to keep ourselves busy with what we can. During the pandemic this has included releasing 3 singles, while also doing other bits in the background. We really hope to be gigging next year though, there’s a gig shaped hole that needs filling.
Review Fix: How do you want your music to affect people?
Wignall: I guess we want it to do two things. Obviously we have some louder, more brutal and thrashy parts to our music which can have a result on audiences, we’ve had circle pits and walls of death before. We also try to present lighter parts to our songwriting, with deep meaningful lyrics and clean, delicate guitar.
Review Fix: What’s next?
Wignall: We’re always working on something these days, but shortly we’ll be releasing part IV to our 5 part collection titles ‘Vacancies’, with part V following up. You can find chapters I, II and III on all major platforms as well as YouTube.
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