This Is Freedom’s debut EP ‘Welcome Home’ has been a work in progress since early 2010 and as it gets its release we catch-up with the band…

What are you currently up to?

We are planning lots of new gigs and our first tour in early 2012, we are also writing our new single which will be up with a new music video in early 2012!

Brief history of This Is Freedom and how you all met…

We met at school in Bucks and all still live here, we have been playing music together for around 4 years, and have been in TIF for 2 years.

Have you seen an upswing in interest in rock music over the past few years? How easy/hard has it been to get the music of This Is Freedom out there?

We have had some great opportunities that have really helped us in terms of getting our music out there, but even with those it proves very difficult! We have watched Pop Rock bands that have been around for years and years finally gain some recognition in the past few years which is a great thing to see.

How did you manage to get your music onto ‘Chalet Girl’ and Channel 4’s ‘Fresh Meat’?

We got in touch with the music supervisor for both of these and turns out he wanted to use our music which was great!

What have been the live highlights so far for the band and who ideally would you like to tour with & why?

Playing with ‘Futures’ at the o2 Academy in Oxford was definitely a highlight for us! Ideally we would love to tour with the upcoming UK rock bands like ‘Deaf Havana’ ‘Futures’ but really right now we would tour with anyone, we want to get our music out as much as possible so anyone who would have us we would be grateful for!

Who have been influences on the band musically?

We all have different personal influences, but as a band we have mainly been influenced by the likes of ‘Jimmy Eat World’ ‘Kings Of Leon’ ‘Foo Fighters’ and the more poppy 90’s bands we grew up listening to.

Does social media like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc. help bands like yourself get established and how do you try to convince people to buy your music when so much music is free online, legally and illegally?

Yes, it would almost be impossible without them. We have really given fans the choice we have quite a few free downloads online, and you can listen to our new EP on Spotify, but you can also buy it from Big Cartel or ITunes, the main thing for us right now is to sell as many CD’s as possible to make the next one, but ultimately just to let as many people as possible hear our music.

Any good rock 'n' roll tales to tell?

Haha, yeah well there’s a few. The Chalet Girl premiere was obviously a massive highlight for us, and there are definitely a few from the after party alone!

Where would the band like to be in a year's time?

We would love to be working on releasing an album by then while having done a few tours, and hopefully then looking forward to touring even more!

Message for your fans...

We love all the guys that come and watch us play, listen to our music every day and have us on their iPod’s, we wouldn’t still be playing music we love if it wasn’t for you guys so thank you! 'Bitter' video