5.5 with Natasha Miller of OneGirlOneBoy

Oct 21, 2013 by Randy Combs

Natasha Miller of OneGirlOneBoy dialed us up via Skype video and, after a technical glitch caused by my errant clicks, we settled in for a lovely chat.

Tell us about the first time you heard yourself on radio.

It was weird because I never like to hear the sound of my own voice because it’s horrible. But it was exciting, it was good . The first time I heard it was in our old band. We got played on Kerrang Radio and BBC Radio2, which was pretty cool, but nothing really ever came of it. So with OneGirlOneBoy, we’ve recently been played on 6 music, BBC6 music which is pretty exciting. That’s where a lot of the bands that have kind of come through, people like Florence and The Machine and bands like that, have gone through the 6 music thing. So that was pretty cool, pretty exciting.

As a band, what’s been your coolest day ever?

Coolest day ever? The really busy days like where we played Splendour festival. It was getting there in the morning and walk around before anybody was there. Getting to go backstage and doing loads of interviews. Then we have to shoot off to Tramlines Festival, play that, and rush back to the Nottingham one so we could see the headline bands. That was a pretty cool day, I felt important like that.

Natasha and Chris are OneGirlOneboy. Get it?

I think as a band, we’re better in the dark. So playing a festival during the day, I don’t know, it brings you out of your comfort zone even more. Not only are there a lot of people there, but it’s pure daylight and there’s no snazzy lights to hide behind. It’s just there you are.

When you’re performing a song, where does it take you in your head?

I don’t even know. Being onstage is completely different than everything because it feels like a half hour or forty five minutes or whatever we’re playing that you can literally do anything and especially for us it’s all about about putting the emotion of the lyrics and the songs through on stage or sometimes there’s like 10 minutes where I’ll zone out and I can’t even remember that 10 minutes. People will say “oh, you were rolling around on the floor” and I’ll say “oh, I don’t remember that bit” but I’m sure I was really enjoying it to a point where I was in that moment. That’s nice; that’s a good feeling.

When you’re onstage, what’s different about you from the every day person?

I feel like I’ve a lot more sass on stage. Normally, I’m quite shy and quite quiet and unless I’ve got to talk to people I’m quite withdrawn and don’t really draw attention to myself but on stage it’s the complete opposite of that, I feel really confident, and it feels more normal to be on stage than trying to struggle through talking to people.

What are your biggest challenges maintaining a music career?

The biggest challenges are probably not having a lot of money while you’re doing it and while you’re building yourself up because everything you earn goes back into doing stuff for the band, goes into promotion, and things like that.

We’ve been so lucky to find people like Ian (Ian Allchin) who have helped us out, who can kind of push us in the right direction and give us feedback. We’re both, both me and Chris, are really stubborn and really kind of “this is the way we want everything”.

So, sometimes it’s nice to have a different person’s perspective to go “maybe to look at this way, look at it a bit differently”. I think the hardest things are wanting certain things on stage or wanting certain equipment that you just know you’re never going to be able to afford at the stage you’re at. It drives you mental because you really want everything to be perfect and everything to be a big wow. At the minute, it’s getting there, but it’s not exactly how we want it to be.

What’s on the ideal OneGirlOneBoy sandwich and what would you wash it down with?

For me, it would be Nutella, peanut butter, anything sweet and sickly like that on my sandwich, and I’d wash it down with milk, because that’s the perfect drink.

Tell us 3 songs from your current playlist