Photo Credit: Lawrence Watson
Words: Shannon Gravelle

Ahead of the release of their upcoming new single, we sat down with THE SPITFIRES‘ frontman and guitarist Billy Sullivan to learn more about the track, the bands new line-up, their upcoming UK headline tour and what they have planned for the rest of 2025.

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You’re new tune ‘Better The Devil You Know’ is nearly here, how are you feeling about it coming out?

Billy – “Buzzing to be honest with you, obviously The Spitfires haven’t released anything in over three years now so it’s exciting to finally get something back out there again. I’m really looking forward to it just being out now and for people to listen to it, you know.

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What is the story and inspiration behind the new song?

Billy – “So it’s an anti-war song, it looks at the current stuff going on in the Middle East, but it does relate to all forms of war. It’s about the way we are still seeing countries being torn apart and seeing thousands of people getting killed because of things like their religion, it’s mental to me that we’re in the year 2025 and that this stuff is still going on do you know what I mean. The Spitfires have always represented and stuck up for what they believed in, and this new song just keeps that going really.

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So, there’s a new line up for the band, we’re seeing new faces, is that mod influence still going to be there, or are we going to be hearing new sounds from you guys?

Billy – “There’s definitely elements to it still there, but I think you can definitely hear some new sort of sounds as well throughout the song from us. There’s a lot of energy going on now but it’s still powerful and relevant to today.

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You went solo for a bit, how have you found that being different to being back in the band again?

Billy – “I always treated that as being in a band to be honest, it took me time to get used to the attention being on me, but I always saw that as just being in a band rather than just being solo. I always wanted to be in a band, from a really young age, so when I went solo that’s just still how I sort of looked at it.

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The tour is coming up for you, what venues and locations are you most excited to play at?

Billy – “Well, it’s a comeback tour so we’ve gone with venues and locations that we did good shows at before as The Spitfires to bring that back, we’ve got places like the O2 Academy in Liverpool, we’re going to Northampton, then we’re also going to places like Dublin and we’re going to Germany with it as well, and we’ve got a show at Koko in London, I’m looking forward to it all to be honest with you, getting back into it and that sort of thing.

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Do you have any expectations for how the tour is going to go and how fans are going to take the new tunes?

Billy – “I don’t have any expectations about the tour to be honest with you no, just to bring back the old songs and then just hopefully people like the new music we’ve got as well and enjoy watching us really do you know what I mean, yeah that’s the goal really”.

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You’ve had a pretty strong start now to the first half of 2025, the band back together, a new song coming out and a tour, do you have any other big plans for the rest of the year that you can tell us?

Billy – “Yeah definitely, there’s a lot of plans for us for the rest of the year, some new music coming out as well which I’m looking forward to.

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What would you say to any older fans of you guys, and any newer fans about your upcoming tour and music?

Billy – “Just to give it a listen really to be honest, the songs have a lot of meaning and I’ve done a lot of writing, so yeah just that they listen and hopefully they enjoy the new music that we’ve got.”

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Finally Billy, who have you been listening to a lot of recently?

Billy – “Oooh I’m trying to think off the top of my head, I’ve been listening to a lot of Elvis Costello to be honest with you, things like The Clash, The Specials. I think now that the band has reformed, I’ve sort of gone back into all that stuff again that I sort of went away from, we used to get compared to things like that so much, so that thing in me sort of just stopped listening, but I’ve gone back into it, you know, Madness is another one. I really liked that new Primal Scream album, that that was a really good album, but yeah just a lot of Elvis Costello to be honest.