While there’s often far more to any overnight success story than meets the eye, for the Greater Manchester-hailing Lottery Winners, the journey to fame spanned over a decade of tireless performing at venues around the UK. The four-piece - singer/guitarist Thom Rylance, bassist/co-lead vocalist Katie Lloyd, guitarist Robert Lally and drummer Joe Singleton - gained recognition a whopping 12 years since they formed back in 2008 with the release of their eponymous debut in 2020.
Two further records followed, both of which foregrounded a joyful merger of indie guitar rock with a chart-ready pop sensibility. Thom's rapid-fire vocal delivery typically coalesces with some of the most vibrant hooks of the last decade.
While the band may have a playful aesthetic and an uplifting sound (see the uber-catchy Burning House and the Frank-Turner featuring Start Again), their lyrical themes often deal with mental health and struggles with anxiety. This is readily apparent on new single Superpower, which documents lead singer Thom’s recent diagnosis with ADHD.
We caught up with Thom to speak about this song and living with ADHD, the new album - ‘Keep on Keeping On’ (Aka: KOKO) and the band’s impressive collaborations with some of music’s most iconic figures.
MusicRadar: Hi there Thom. The new Lottery Winners single Superpower is centred around your recent diagnosis with ADHD. Was that a condition that you had recognised in yourself for a while, and what spurred you to get a diagnosis?
Thom Rylance: “Not always, no. I spent a lot of time kind of confused, and honestly, just feeling like I was a rubbish person. Especially through childhood and at school and stuff. I had a really difficult time at school - I ended up getting kicked out of two schools. I didn't understand why I couldn't sit [still] in the lessons.
"I didn’t know anything about ADHD, I just thought I was a bad person. I just thought I was dumb and rubbish at stuff. It was only like, much later in life when I started doing a bit of my own research into it, and it all became clear. It kind of got a bit of weight off my shoulders, and I felt a bit less guilty about it. Getting the formal diagnosis kind of sealed the deal."
MR: In the song, there’s a lyric which refers to being ‘wired up wrong since the day I was born’. Would your life have been different do you think, had you got that diagnosis earlier?
TR: "I think absolutely it would, yeah. But, in the same way, I'm really happy about where I've ended up. I had a rough childhood, you know, I spent a lot of time just really sad because I didn't know what was going on. It's weird, because when I got [that diagnosis] I had this moment of relief where you're just like, ‘oh, well, you know, some of those things weren't my fault’. But then you have this, like, almost a bereavement, and you think about everything that I've missed out on, and things that I couldn't do, which I should have.
“I should have been able to finish college and get my qualification, and I should have been able to go to university, but I couldn't. Because I didn't - I couldn't do that. So, yeah I would have had a different life. But at the same time, [ADHD] allows me to do things that without, I wouldn't be able to do what I do now, which is everything I've always wanted to do.”
MR: Near the close of the song, you state ‘I’ll keep on, keeping on’, and that expression gives the upcoming parent album its title. What was it about that line that you felt summed up the whole record for you?
TR: “Well it's a recurring theme throughout a lot of the songs, actually. So that lyric, that line, comes into it a lot, and it was just anything that we write, or that I write is kind of autobiographical.
“As much as this time has been a bit of a bereavement, it’s also been a relief and caused a lot of reflection on things. There’s been a lot of self-forgiveness as well. There's a song called Panic Attack, where I look back at some of those times and some of the more traumatic parts of my life, and zooming in on them. It's kind of a way for me to let go of those things.
“So, ‘keep on, keeping on', is me saying, ‘Right, okay, all that's happened, but now let's go forward’. That’s the theme throughout the record. Panic Attack is a song I really like as well, because it's a song about having a panic attack which is a really serious subject matter.
"It’s literally about [a memory] of school, where I remember staring at my shoes in the school corridor and thinking I was going to die because my heart was beating so fast and I couldn't catch my breath. But then we’ve given it this real summery, melodic dress to wear. It’s even got a children's choir on it. I think that that's kind of cool, because I spent a lot of time masking that, the song is kind of masking it as well. So I thought that was quite cool.”
MR: Something Lottery Winners do very well is blending these heavier themes into really fun and hook-laden pop songs. In particular your last album (Anxiety Replacement Therapy) dug into various facets of mental illness. Would you say this new record serves as a part two to that journey?
TR: “I didn't want to do, like ‘ART’: part two. I think you just have got to write about what you're experiencing and and if you're writing about, like authentic things, then people are going to receive that in the best way. I think any kind of disingenuous music is transparent almost immediately. That was never something that I was interested in doing. I think maybe all my songs are going to be like this for the rest of my life… unless I suddenly get really happy.”
MR: So some outlets have dubbed you as the potential saviours of guitar based music. What is your take on the current state of guitar bands and the rising costs for young people trying to get their feet off the ground as musicians in 2024?
TR: “Well, I don't know anything about like, the real younger kids and what they're kind of doing, but I don't see any drought in guitar bands on the touring circuit. In independent venues, I think think the scene is rife at the moment.
"Actually, I think there's so many great bands that you could go out any night of the week and see one, and that is really refreshing.
“I think we're about to have a big resurgence now in kids picking up guitars, and I think we've got the Gallagher brothers to thank for it. Them reforming, and the hysteria that surrounded that, is just complete testament to how important they are culturally and in fashion and in music.
"I think that any kind of music kind of moves in circles. It's always cyclical, and we're just about to hit the guitar and indie thing again, I hope so anyway, because we're sick of these solo artists out there with this ‘posh-pop’ like, I'm sick of that."
MR: Let’s talk about the massively infectious You Again. Once you hear it - that hook is in your head for life. You collaborated with (Reverend and the Makers') Jon McClure on that track, how did that collaboration first come about?
TR: “When we met Jon we just instantly fell in love. Me and him had a proper bromance. We make each other laugh, and we’re always texting each other stupid things, like every day.
"It was just that realisation that, ‘we both write songs, let's write one together’. I wrote something and sent it to him, and he's really picky. He was like, ‘nah’. So, I wrote something else and sent it to him, and he was like, ‘nah’ again.
“Then he wrote something and sent to me, and I was like, ‘nah’. But then, he sent [what would become] the central hook of You Again. I was like ‘wow!’ He sent it over to me at two in the morning, and by quarter past two, I’d started written it all.
"It was a light-bulb moment where it just hit me. I really love it. I think it's one of the best pop songs in the last 10 years.”
MR: Is that how things typically start for you in songwriting terms, that the main hook comes first?
TR: “The thing with songwriting is that it's just so different every time that that I wish there was a process, because I'd be able to sit down and do it more.
"It can be a lyric, or sometimes you just pick up a guitar, and it’s like ouija board or an antenna - it just kind of comes out. I've seen a lot of songwriters in interviews, and read a lot of songwriters saying this, and I always thought that's a bit cheesy, but it’s literally true that the songs are just floating around in the ether, and sometimes you've just got to be there to receive them. I don't even think it's on purpose a lot of the time.”
MR: Did the songs originate prior to getting in the studio, or did they emerge as you worked on the album?
TR: “A lot of them were written on tour. So, after a show I have this huge adrenaline surge, and then I find it very hard to relax. When we end up going back to a hotel room, (usually a Travelodge), I'm just sat there staring at the ceiling, so I just take this little studio with me.
"I recorded the vocals for Superpower the night after supporting Nickelback at the O2 Arena. I just went back to the hotel and did the whole thing. My favourite thing to do is get in the van the next morning and just play everyone the song that I made that night.”
MR: Speaking of Nickelback, this album features guest vocals from Chad Kroeger (on the track Ragdoll). Impressive stuff!
TR: "That's stupid innit, what's happening there!?”
MR: It’s pretty incredible, but you’ve also collaborated with the likes of Shaun Ryder and Boy George, some major figures in music. They must be great sources of advice and wisdom, and they obviously must see something in you guys to want to want to work with you.
TR: “It’s really humbling and really incredible that we get to even meet and speak to so many of our heroes. Watching Chad work was unbelievable. I wrote this song (Ragdoll) and I sent it to him, and he really liked it. Chad called me in the middle of the night and was cursing me because he couldn't sleep, because he couldn't get it out of his head. I was like, ‘yeah, man, well, now you know everyone else felt with How You Remind Me!’
"We actually recorded together in a dressing room in Munich, but watching him work was a really incredible experience. There's so many people that I really look up to now that I can ask advice from and speak to.
"I was speaking to Noel Gallagher today, which I just think is incredible. Tell 12 year old me that and he'd absolutely freak out.
“The strangest one is that ‘I’ve recently made friends with Robbie Williams and, we have, like, almost nightly FaceTimes where we just decompress at the end of the day, and we talk about the things we've been through, because he’s got ADHD too.
"We bond a lot over that. Obviously, we're at very different levels, and I completely understand that. He also has to do this whole performance thing, where he has to - no matter how he's feeling - go and put that on. He also gets negative comments online that he has to deal with. It’s kind of reassuring that people in his position are still people with feelings.
“I really like Robbie. I think he's one of the funniest, most talented, amazing people I've ever met.
MR: So, you guys first formed back in 2008. It’s been a long road up until this point and must have had its share of hardships. How did you keep the resilience to persevere so long?
TR: “I think for us the first 12 years would have been preparation. It was our training, where we were learning our craft. We played every kind of gig there is.
"We were playing in pubs to no one. We were playing weddings, we were playing, you know, just every kind of gig you can imagine. I think without that, we wouldn't be as good as we are live, and we wouldn't be able to handle this really strange world that we've been thrust into.
“I’m very lucky, that I found three other people that only want this and will not accept no for an answer. I think that's quite rare in bands, and I think a lot of people, after 12 years, if it wasn't going anywhere, would have hung up the guitar or whatever. But we love each other. We're a family, and every knock we've ever taken we've done together, and every amazing moment we've got to share, we've done it together. There was just no option of not doing that.”
MR: Throughout that time, I guess you guys had to sustain your music financially, too?
TR: “Music was always the main thing. Everything else that we did was always to supplement it. Kate used to clean toilets. We signed a record deal to Warner Brothers, and the same day, she was cleaning toilets, because we had to do that.
"I used to work at Claire's Accessories - piercing ears, which was a weird job. The first person I ever did was a baby, like, three months old, and I did it wrong. It haunts me to this day… I still hear that baby crying when I try and sleep at night.
"So, I never wanted to do any of that shit. I just wanted to be in a band. One day we decided we're not going to do anything else. Now, [when we quit our jobs] there was no money coming in, but we've had that kind of determination that it was all going to work out, and it is doing and I hope it continues to."
MR: 'KOKO' will be your fourth album in five years - is that speed of working indicative of the hunger to maintain your hard-won position?
TR: "I just write songs every day and we just tour all the time, and we record all the time - it's just what we do. I don't know what bands are supposed to do. I never know that, and we've never really been concerned with that either.
"Like everything that we've ever tried to do we've wanted to do on our own terms, and we've never really followed a playbook or a mold set by anybody else. Because I think it's an ever-changing industry - a broken industry. So what is the right way to do it these days, you know?"
MR: We’ve recently analysed the costs and the sort of revenue people get from their music and the decline of bands, but I guess people like yourselves are living proof that it is still possible, in this ecosystem, to gain success.
TR: “It didn't come easy, and it’s not through streaming. The way we make a living is by being on the road all the time, and by being a great live band that people want to see. I honestly believe that if you've got good songs, and you can create an atmosphere and make people feel something, then you're fine.
"The streaming thing is weird, how you’re so at that peril of whether they'll put you on the playlist and stuff. We get told, ‘Oh, you know, make sure you do some posts for this streaming service and show them some love on your socials.’ And I'm like, ‘Well, show us love!’"
MR: So what's next on the agenda for The Lottery Winners?
TR: “We literally fly to Australia tomorrow for the first time, and that's exciting. It’s just wild that we get to go to these places just because we're in a band who make songs.
"I've seen a lot of the world that I would have definitely never seen being from, you know, a working class town, Leigh. I would never have gone to Australia. I don't think I would have. None of my family have ever been to Australia, so it's really cool that we get to do stuff like that.
We've got some more singles coming out, and then I think we're doing a little tour in Europe with The Levellers and then a little tour in the UK with Jamie Webster, then we've got all our own shows. It’s going to be great.
The new Lottery Winners single Superpower is streaming now, and their new album 'KOKO' will be released on February 21st 2025. More info can be found at their website
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