It has been an amazing journey for Northern Irish band Silhouette, the group name given to the musical vision of songtress Shauna Tohill and her bandmates. From joining Snow Patrol as a guest vocalist, to featuring on Discover Northern Ireland’s television advert, Silhouette are rapidly making their way to the top.
In a chat with Shauna Tohill and drummer Connor Burnside, they tell me about the process of bringing Shauna’s musical vision to the fore, Snow Patrol’s invitation and the release of their new single Can’t Keep Up.
Made up of Tohill and her musical friends, Silhouette was the name Shauna chose to represent her image and vision. “I played in a few other bands, so when I wanted to release my own stuff, I didn’t want to be confined with just my name” says Shauna, ” Silhouette is a shadow, so it represents me and the band, not just one of us”.
Shauna has also accompanied Snow Patrol on a number of tour dates, singing with the band at the MTV EMA’s in Belfast was a personal highlight in her time with the band “It was amazing, and to be asked along to feature on some the tour dates was great too”.
Silhouette’s new single Can’t Keep Up is being released at the end of the month, but it’s not he first time the track is to gain exposure. The song featured on the Northern Ireland Tourist Board’s television ad last year. The NITB picked the song from a compilation CD compiled by the Oh Yeah Centre in Belfast. The track has also been re-recorded for the new EP “We kept the same energy in the song, but its better now when the trumpets come in, because they give it that ‘yeah!’ feeling” laughs Shauna.
When asked about the inspiration for Can’t Keep Up, Shauna says ”I wrote Can’t Keep Up about how busy life can get and how sometimes people can forget their priorities because their under so much stress.” Talking about how her songs develop, Shauna explains “when writing the songs, I guess they’re like a skeleton, and you flesh it out after you’ve got the bones of it”.
Currently working on a debut album, Shauna and Connor mention that although a shortlist of songs has been drawn up, the making of the album hasn’t gone entirely smooth “about a month ago, my laptop crashed, so I lost some demo’s” winces Shauna. But it wasn’t all bad news despite the unfortunate timing of a deadly laptop, as Connor adds “Shauna had most of them on an external drive, so we were lucky with that”.
Most recently, Shauna and Co. have opened for OneRepublic in Dublin’s Olympia Theatre “we really enjoyed it” Conoor mentions, “yeah, we have a similar taste in instrumentation, so that was interesting.” continues Shauna.
The future is both bright and busy for Silhouette. Following a short stop off in Dublin to play the Rubysessions and do some radio promo, they then head off to Berlin this weekend to continue promoting Can’t Keep Up. Then its back to Derry for BBC’s Big Weekend Fringe Festival, joining the likes of SOAK and Girls Names for the pre festival build up.
Silhouettes’s new EP Can’t Keep Up is released on May 31st through RubyWorks.
Can’t keep Up is available to download on iTunes from May 31st
Visit silhouetteofficial.com for more.
RobMoro 
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