The members of BASEMENT recently talked to Punks in Vegas about their decision to the band on hiatus.
You guys just announced a hiatus. What prompted it?
Alex: Basically, circumstance. We’re all super young and we’ve got loads of things going on, like school or work. And as much as the band is an amazing opportunity for us, we’ve got a life other than the band. The band has always been an outlet just for fun and doing awesome things, but this isn’t what we’re going to be doing for the rest of our lives. We’ve always been realistic with careers and school and things that take major priority. So it’s unfortunate but at the moment, we have to put other things first. The band has always come second. We’re not a full-time touring band and we can’t afford to move away from home and keep the band going. We’d have to live with our parents and that’s really not something that we want to do. Some people are like “ah, tour life, I’ll be doing this forever!” That’s definitely not what it’s been for us. It’s always been that we have lives, and we have the band and we try to figure them both out, and it just reached the point where we’ve got to focus on other things. Fisher [Andrew Fisher, vocalist] has just gone back to school and you’ve got to do that first. It’s really important. And if the time came where we thought we could do something again, we’d maybe look at it. But at the moment, we’ve got to put that first.
During the hiatus do you guys plan on doing one-off shows from time to time or do you consider that to be done?
James: Not in the foreseeable future. I’m seeing it as done.
Ronan: We can’t really carry on if we’re doing that. Unless there’s a time when we’re all free.
Alex: It’s never been like we’re definitely breaking up because it’s always been “we’ll see what happens.”
Any other musical endeavors planned for any of you?
James: We always keep things going. They always take a massive backseat because of this band, but it’s kind of exciting, we’ve got some other stuff. A couple of us are in a band called the November Group, and we’ve done a few shows. And there are a couple of us in this band called Strange Places, it’s like a hardcore band. That’s fun. We always keep stuff going. It will be fun to do some low key stuff, a few things here and there.
