We caught up with Scott and Chris from The Flatliners before their supporting show for NOFX at the Birmingham Academy to talk about touring with their idols, their love of England, and Julia Roberts.

Thanks for taking the time out to talk to us.
That’s alright.

You’ve been together since 2002; can you tell us a bit about how you got together and how you came up with your name?
(Scott) Well, we all went to high school together, and we all lived in the suburbs of Toronto, so there was really nothing else to do but play music together. We grew up in an area where lots of local punk shows were going on, so it was really easy to get a band started and to get a show. We just started from there, as a thing to do at weekends. Never thought we’d be across the pond, over here.
And the name; were did that come from?
(Chris) We’ve always been obsessed with Horror movies and all that imagery. I remember this movie once called The Flatliners, with Keifer Sutherland. We’re also really big fans of Julia Roberts [she’s in the film too], so we figured we’d throw the two together. When we decided on the name, it meant nothing at all, but now it’s kinda gone full circle and what we do lives up to the band’s name. In the movie they kill themselves for a drug reaction, and then bring themselves back to life. I’ve never seen the movie, to be honest with you! He owns it [to Scott]!
You should watch it!
(Scott) But what if it sucks?! We’d be really bummed.
(Chris) One time we watched it on fast forward…
(Scott) Julia Roberts gets naked, but we missed it.
(Chris) We figured if the Misfits could name their band after a movie, we could too.
(Scott) But lots of people have seen our movie!

Who would you say are your main influences?
(Chris) It’s hard to say really. Everything you listen to eventually serves as some sort of influence, whether you know it or not. You can’t get around it. You’re not going to listen to one style of music, or another, and one’s not going to permeate the other. You want your own songs, and your own style.
(Scott) We’re big fans of lots of types of music, so we like to bring it together to make it something original to us.
(Chris) We can all agree on a lot of bands, but we all have our own little thing that we like to listen to that no one else in the band does. All of that helps when it comes to writing songs. All these different perspectives come in like a whirlwind, and it’s the best possibility really. If we all just listened to the same 5 bands forever, we probably would have written one song!

You’re currently signed to Fat Wreck Chords. What’s it like to be signed to such a well-known label?
(Chris) It’s not that fun. It’s really overrated, everyone’s really mean to us, and they don’t give us any opportunities, at all, ever. Yeah, it sucks, it totally sucks.
(Scott) We’re corporate slaves.
(Chris) Nah, it’s the best fucking thing ever. It’s a childhood dream come true. We’re young guys and we grew up on the first handful of Fat Wreck Chords bands.
(Scott) We’re still listening to all of them.
(Chris) Yeah, all those bands are still around, and still kicking it. And then there’s the new generation of Fat Wreck Chords bands. It’s an honour to be part of it really.
(Scott) Mike really knows how to pick bands.
Yeah, we heard you were hand-picked by Fat Mike himself.
(Chris) Yeah, he was the one who convinced everyone else at the office that we should be on the label.
(Scott) No one else believed in us! [laughter]
(Chris) Our drummer Paul met their Canadian Rep at a Lagwagon show once, with a mutual friend of theirs. It was right around the time we were demoing new songs and we didn’t have a label for our next record. He just mustered up the courage to say, hey, you work for Fat Wreck Chords, do you wanna hear some of our songs? Melanie Kaye her name is, and she was really into it. She called Paul back and she said, “You know what, I’m gonna send these to Mike right now”. We were like “Oh cool, but whatever”, we didn’t expect anything, there was zero expectation. I think Mike called Paul a week later, and he said he wanted to hear more songs. And yeah, he called us back like a week after that, and he was like “I’m gonna plug your record”. And we were like “We’ll think about it…” [laughter] Nah, we were fucking stoked.

Are you big fans of NOFX?
(Chris) Oh, yeah, they were one of the first punk rock bands I got into. I remember, Scott and I were in the same grade 7 class, and our friend Rob went on the classroom computer during class and showed us ‘Punk In Drubic’. That was my first experience of NOFX. And I’ve been fucking stoked on everything they’ve put out ever since.
(Scott) And now we’re playing with them every night.
(Chris) I never thought we’d be here when we were in grade 7, hanging out in science class!

Living the dream! So, we gather you’ve been writing some new material. What can we expect from your 3rd album?
(Chris) Salsa. Calypso. Jazz infused hip-hop. R ‘n’ B…
(Scott) Nah, the exact same.
(Chris) Yeah, we’ll probably actually just write new lyrics to our current songs.
(Scott) We’re gonna see if anyone actually notices. No one’s done it before!
(Chris) Nah, we have a full record written, so hopefully after this tour we’ll have some downtime to jam a little more, before we set to record, early summer. It’ll hopefully be out by the end of the year. There’s no solid timeframe yet, but that’s the hope.

You toured with Less Than Jake recently, and you’ve toured with a whole host of amazing bands – Rancid, Suicide Machines, and of course NOFX. What’s it been like touring with some of your idols you grew up listening to?
(Chris) After every show we have to piece our heads back together! It’s fucking weird, but in the best possible way.
(Scott) Everyone’s so supportive of up-and-coming bands, younger dudes like us, who are just on the road all the time doing it. They just wanna help, and it’s amazing. We’re definitely the luckiest fucking guys ever.
(Chris) Yeah, we’re the luckiest people we know. Especially that LTJ tour we just did. In my opinion at least, it was the quickest passing month long tour of my life. Those guys are just so fun to hang out with. Such a great band, they’re so welcoming. We were lucky to not experience and rock star bullshit.
(Scott) Some bands just go on the bus straight after they’ve played and they won’t talk to anyone…
(Chris) But with LTJ it was always open-door. We hung out on their bus more than in our own van! They’re really cool, and it was awesome.

Have you got any funny stories from on tour?
(Scott) I got arrested once for breaking into a beer truck. [laughter] And I slept in the van one night, after a party night, and I woke up and I was getting towed into an impound lot.
(Chris) And he didn’t drive at that point!
(Scott) It was in Michigan somewhere, and I didn’t know where I was, and I just called the guys and said I’m in some impound lot in Michigan, you’ve gotta come and get me out!
(Chris) We had to pay $250 to get him and our van back. We also went to an S&M club in Toyko with Fat Mike a couple of weeks ago, which was pretty fun. There were a couple of guys from LTJ as well, and a couple of guys from Bad Religion and Sum 41 too.
(Scott) So we were just like hanging out with all these crazy millionaires seeing people get beaten up by junkies…
(Chris) It was super weird. You should have seen Mike’s back after that. It was pretty rough.

Ok, so back to this tour. You were in Paris last night. What was it like to play the City of Love?
(Chris) It was lovely.
(Scott) There was love in the air.
(Chris) The show was wicked. Shows in France are too hot though. France really needs to just, get air conditioners everywhere, because there are none. And we know there’s money in France. We know that people in France could probably afford an air conditioner. It’s so fucking hot. There are some really, really hot shows in France. But they’re all awesome. And French kids really know how to have a good time.
(Scott) I like Paris a lot. Very beautiful city.
(Chris) We had to stay awake until 5am, so our tour manager Ed could drive to the ferry, so we wouldn’t miss it. So we stayed up drinking til 5, and today we feel horrible…
(Scott) Cheers! [clink beer bottles]
And you’re still drinking now?
(Chris) We have to!
(Scott) It’s weird, everywhere else in Europe gave us this small Kronnenburg bottles, all these tiny bottles, and then we show up here and get [show us their massive bottles of beer]
(Chris) We’re so excited to be back in England!

So is this your first time in Birmingham?
(Chris) Yeah, yeah, we came to England last May, but we played Exeter, Camden, and Bristol. That was it. We had a day off in Exeter which was cool. But yeah, we’ve never played Birmingham, and we’ve never played Leeds, We’re going to Cardiff too which should be cool. I guess that’s Wales right? I’ve personally always been obsessed with England. You guys have the best music culture in the entire world. It’s legendary. The shows last time, although we were headlining, they were smaller shows, and they were so fun, but these shows should be off the fucking wall.
(Scott) I’m reading some suburban Welsh books too, to try to get my slang down. I think it’s working, it’s coming along.
What have you got so far?
(Scott) Er, the bairns? That’s kids.
That’s Scottish!
(Scott) It could be Scottish, yeah! We’re going to Scotland though, so the book’ll come good!

Are there any particular dates on this tour you’re looking forward to the most?
(Scott) Every city’s new to us. We want to experience them all to the fullest.
(Chris) We’ve never played Ireland, we’ve never played Scotland. Tomorrow and Sunday we have 2 shows in Ireland and then Scotland on Monday. We’re really just stoked to be where we are. We love it here.

So what do you do on your rare days off?
(Scott) Book more shows!
(Chris) Yeah, we have no days off on this tour. The LTJ tour we just did in the States, I think we had 2 days off for the whole month. It’s better that way though. It’s weird, you sometimes yearn for them [days off], when you haven’t had one in a while, but it’s better to play a show.
(Scott) We’ll play a show with NOFX and it’ll be a 3,000 capacity room, and the next day we’ll play in front of 50 people. It’s great. You get to experience 2 different sides of things.

I noticed on your MySpace you’ve got some impressive range of t-shirts. Who’s the person who comes up with the designs?
(Chris) I do the designs for almost all of the t-shirts. We have a few friends who are way better at designing t-shirts than I am. Because they can draw, I can’t draw! We have a friend called Richard Minino who goes under the alias Horsebites. He’s an incredible artist and he’s helped us out from time to time. And his friend Derek Deal, did one of the shirts we have on this tour. But other than that, I do everything. We have a lot of downtime on tour, so it’s cool, I enjoy it.

We hear a lot of stories of bands getting random presents from fans. Have you been given anything good yet?
(Scott) Our drummer and bass player get a lot of presents! But they just smoke it away every night [laughter]. Those are usually the presents we get! Besides that, we’ve been given books before.
(Chris) Actually, rather than gifts from fans, we usually get gifts from friends in other bands while we’re on tour. One time Chuck from the Mad Caddies gave us a whole jar full of weed! [indicates the enormous size of the jar]
(Scott) More things that we just smoke away! Can you put this in your interview?
Oh, definitely, yeah!
(Scott) Cool, drugs drugs drugs drugs drugs drugs!
(Chris) Do you know a band called Dead To Me? They’re from San Francisco, they’re on Fat Wreck Chords, they’re really, really good, you should check them out. One of those guys gave me a Charles Bukowski book, with all these weird poems, about complete dead beats.
(Scott) He’s an American god of literature. He would write about awful things, but his poetry was excellent.
(Chris) Yeah, he wrote a book called Hot Water Music where the band got their name from. It’s wicked. But yeah, it seems like we get more gifts from friends than fans.
(Scott) But er, [loudly, into Dictaphone] we’ll take gifts! [laughter]

Ok, so given your success so far, where do you see the band in 5 years?
(Scott) Hopefully doing the same thing. Maybe a couple more CDs under our belts. We probably will have gained a lot of weight. We won’t look so pretty anymore.
A few extra wrinkles?
(Scott) We’ll get lots of wrinkles. Jon probably won’t be able to speak because he’ll have smoked so much weed his lungs’ll collapse. We’ll be celebrating the 5th year anniversary of you asking this question! [laughter]

One question that we ask every band; if you had a choice, would you rather be a zebra or a giraffe?
(Scott) Hmm, [long pause for contemplation] zebras can run free, so I’d rather be a zebra. Giraffes don’t move very fast do they? Zebras just run wild.
(Chris) Giraffes have long necks too, so their weight distribution sucks. I’m clumsy enough as it is.
(Scott) A zebra’s a funky horse. It’s like that song by The Rolling Stones - Wild Horses
(Chris) [sings] “Wild zebras…”
(Scott) Where did you come up with that question anyway? [they worry that it has psychological significance and decide to change their answer to giraffe]

If we had acoustic guitars here and I said go, play some random pop covers, what would you do?
(Chris) We could probably figure out some Backstreet Boys songs.
(Scott) Wilson Philips?!
(Chris) We could definitely do some Wilson Philips? You guys don’t have an acoustic guitar do you…?
[There’s one behind us, we try to encourage them]
(Chris) It’s not ours, we’re not allowed to touch it!
(Scott) I would say Wilson Philips, and or…
(Chris) We could probably figure out some Bee Gees songs.
(Scott) Yeah, we once played with a band, a hair metal band who just covered Bee Gees songs.
Are you talking about Tragedy?! They’re awesome!
(Chris) Yeah!
(Scott) We played with them and NOFX actually once in Jersey.
(Chris) We shared a dressing room with them, and after the show they had all these flamingo girls. There were just all these people flooding into the room, feathered up and shit, it was weird.
Did they get their glitter all over you guys?
(Chris) No!
(Scott) We stayed the fuck away. Who does Bee Gees songs?! Weird. Nah, I’m just joking. We didn’t get covered in glitter though!

Alright, well, thanks for your time. Have you got a message you’d like to tell your fans who might be reading this?
(Scott) Give us more gifts! [laughter] We’ll play more Bee Gees songs!
(Chris) Yeah, yeah, next time we’re in the UK, we’re gonna do a Bee Gees tour.
Awesome, I’ll look forward to that.
(Scott) It’s gonna be folk music though. Folk implosion.
(Chris) Folk implosion?! [laughter]

Interview by Helen and Ash