2025 was a huge year for Hastings rock trio HotWax. Following the release of two introductory EPs in previous years, the band released their debut album, Hot Shock, into the world, receiving glowing reviews and cementing themselves as one of the most exciting alternative acts in Britain. Following an interview with the BBC that was, in Lola Sam’s words, “very BBC”, the band discussed the album, as well as their experiences touring as both a headliner and a support act for some of the world’s biggest names.
At the beginning of 2026, the trio were gearing up for a 22-date tour of the UK and Europe including some of the largest spaces they’d ever headlined. “We’re excited, but really nervous as well because they're big venues and quite iconic venues”, Sam says. “It’s nerve-wracking, but I'm really excited to see people, some new people and old fans as well. Hopefully a lot of young people will come too because it's a fourteen-plus tour”. “People have had a year to enjoy the album as well”, vocalist Tallullah Sim-Savage continues, “so it’ll be fun. Especially after Christmas, everything kind of slows down, so we're really ready to start being on tour again travelling”.
“The only other headline tour we've done was in March last year and our album had just come out. The feeling that gave us was so different to being the support, I love being the support band and we've been on some really great tours which have been amazing for us, but you don't get that feeling of knowing that everyone's there actually to see you. It's really quite overwhelming; when we did that last headline tour, we were so tired just from feeling so happy about it”.
The band’s most recent tour began in conjunction with Independent Venue Week, the UK’s annual seven-day celebration of music and arts spaces that took place in the usually slow month of January. The remaining dates were also intended to support Music Venues Trust: “it’s so important”, Sim-Savage affirms. “We were talking to the BBC about it and saying how, especially for young people, to be able to perform at these venues or go to gigs is really where a lot of people find themselves and find their confidence and their tribe of people".
Credit: HotWax / Pomona
"Obviously it’s not just for young people, but it's really important that we make an effort to go to these places and support live music, and just support humans interacting. I feel like gigs are such a big thing where people chat to each other and experience the love they all have for music or a certain artist. And I feel like that's getting so lost in our society. There’s so many reasons why we feel so passionate about independent venues”.
Sam was quick to point out the impact independent venues had on her own self-discovery, too, reminiscing on playing her first gigs as a member of HotWax at a time when “the town we live in had loads of venues”, and mourning the fact that “sadly, most of them have shut down now, which is another reason why we want to support grassroots venues. We started off just playing in all these spaces around Hastings and if we'd never had that, people wouldn't have seen us and then we wouldn't have built up a fanbase. Also, the experience helped us realise that this is what we want to do for the rest of our lives”.
Continuing to look back at their origins, Sim-Savage echoed the importance of independent venues as “such a big part of our lives. To think how many venues have shut down, it’s really sad, and then people our age won’t have that, and they might be in towns that only have one venue that can't afford to stay open”.
Early into their career, it was inevitable that HotWax would receive comparisons to their predecessors. However, the comparisons they did receive placed them in league with some of the biggest and best bands in the world, notably Wolf Alice, who recently released their fourth studio album, and even Nirvana.
“We did feel some pressure at the start”, Sim-Savage admits, “people comparing us to grunge heroes and bands that have paved their way was big for us. But I think now we're so comfortable with playing live and our music is always adapting and changing as well. We’re never staying the same, and I think as long as people keep enjoying our live shows and we keep enjoying it, that's really all that we want to really worry about”.
Sim-Savage manages to see both sides of the comparisons they attract, however, stating “it’s very flattering, but when we're on stage it's really all about like the passion and emotion. With Wolf Alice, I think something we've taken inspiration from them is how they merge genres really impressively, there’s so many Wolf Alice songs that sound so vastly different to others. That's something that we really enjoy doing too”.
For HotWax's debut album, the blistering Hot Shock, the band enlisted Catherine Marks as a producer. Marks is known for her work on Wolf Alice’s early material, but brought the ferocity of her work with The Mysterines and the tenderness of her work with boygenius to her recordings with HotWax, facilitating the diversity they hoped to present. “She came to our gig a year before we actually recorded the album”, Sam recalls, “and we did it with her and Steph Marziano. It was definitely a crazy experience, and one that I’ll remember forever. Having an all-female production team wasn't intentional, but we're really glad that it ended up like that because the album wouldn't have come out how it did without both of them”.
As their career has progressed, it has become clear that HotWax are leading a charge of female-dominated rock bands in the modern age, and both Sam and Sim-Savage were eager to discuss their relationship to this position. “We are a girl band, I suppose”, Sim-Savage acknowledges. “I think for years we were really pissed off at everyone always saying that we were a girl band and that we needed to play with the other girl bands. We were so against that, that for so long we kind of hated always being lumped in with just girl bands. There’s so many gigs and line-ups and festivals or whatever that are just girl bands, but we felt as if we had to prove ourselves as just a good band”.
“Now I feel like we don't experience that as much, we're a bit older and less stubborn and annoyed. Now we are part of this uprising of girls in bands and there's so many around at the moment, there’s a load of bands who are female-fronted and it feels like a really amazing thing to be part of. It’s really empowering and I'm really glad that we're part of it. I think when we were younger we thought we just wanted to be in a normal band, but it's great that the industry is slowly changing and getting better”.
Another female act in the “uprising” described by Sim-Savage is Nova Twins, the genre-blending rock duo who HotWax supported at the end of last year. “It was amazing”, Sim-Savage states. “We've known them for years, we used to go and watch them in Hastings in small venues ten years ago, so it was a really incredible tour to be on. It was also really nice to go on tour with other girls”, she continues, before Sam remarks that “their fans are so nice and we really felt like we were getting through to them. It was just an amazing time around some amazing places in Europe, one of the best tours we've done for sure”.
HotWax have an impressive repertoire of support slots, having opened for The Libertines, Royal Blood and Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes in the past. Nova Twins, however, “became more like family, we were all living together. We've been really lucky that every band we’ve supported has been really lovely and really taken care of us, going that extra mile with the support band which is really appreciated. Maybe the band we support next will be awful”, Sim-Savage jokes.
Concluding by speaking about HotWax’s plans for the remainder of the year, she revealed “we’re working on music all the time, and we'll be doing festivals throughout the summer. We’ll see what happens from there”.
Whatever does happen, if their recent progression is anything to go by then 2026 is sure to be an exciting year for HotWax. With an impressive debut album under their belt and an extensive tour on the way, it doesn’t look like they’ll be slowing down anytime soon, and their appearance at Manchester’s Gorilla may be one of the final chances to catch them in a relatively small space.
https://open.spotify.com/album/3Mb1kIexwEEpa8mc9HLNOl?si=lWwghcRlQr-bz7aGbsWKXQ
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