Photo Credit: Liam Maxwell
Quickly making a presence on social media, Bank Holiday are about to emerge with one of the songs of the summer. We sat down with Mac and Luke from the band to chat about the formation off of the back of their previous project, their reaction to the short form content that has made ‘Out of the Blue’ a favourite amongst many on TikTok as well as their plans for the remainder of 2026.
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How did the formation of Bank Holiday materialise?
Luke: Me and Oli were previously in SHADE. Mac joined towards the end.
Mac: I played bass and keys for a while, but then we all left that project at the same time. We were working together for a bit and then came Bank Holiday.
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What drove you to continue playing and get together as Bank Holiday?
Luke: We wanted to change the style of music we were doing. In the SHADE it just didn’t feel right. The idea was to do a whole different genre really.
Mac: As Oli and Luke moved past that sound, it caused creative disputes. Personally, I believe if you don’t agree with the art you’re making, you shouldn’t do it. Originally it was called Project 26. We wrote a load of tunes and had lots of conversations. This has been planned out for about six to eight months. If we’re going to do this properly, we need to have a good solid plan. Have some tunes ready so we aren’t rushing things.
Luke: Having learned from previous mistakes in the past, we thought fuck it, lets give it another go.
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Mac, you played some solo shows with Jamie Webster on his UK tour last November, where you were joined by Luke on stage. Was this the start of Bank Holiday in live form?
Mac: I got invited to La Sierra Casa, which is a songwriting camp in Spain. That was an amazing opportunity to go out there on my own. I wrote a song with Jamie Webster and Kyle Falconer (The View / La Sierra Casa founder). When I came back, someone had passed my number on to Jamie and he invited me to play two of the dates on his UK tour. So I said to Luke that this was our starting point really. Let’s start with this and go from there. There has been some time in between then and now, but we didn’t want to rush anything. We want to give people good quality stuff. We got a decent amount of following from that which is nice.
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What is the writing process like between the three of you?
Luke: We are all good at writing our own parts. We’ve only done a few bits together really. I am great at writing chords and melodies whereas Mac is great with lyrics and just makes it make sense. I don’t write songs well with people usually, but it did work this time.
Mac: There are very contrasting things we’re good at between us but it does go hand in hand.
Luke: We wrote ‘Out of the Blue’ in about twenty minutes. We were buzzing about it.
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Your first show as Bank Holiday is a sold out gig at Gullivers in Manchester. How excited are you for that?
Luke: We’re buzzing with that.
Mac: Everyone sets out to sell a gig out, that’s the whole point but we didn’t expect it to sell out as fast as it did. It’s a different feeling playing on stage. It should be really fun and with some great support acts too.
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Your debut single ‘Out of the Blue’ is scheduled for release on 27th May. What has the reception been like on the teasers across socials so far?
Luke: TikTok has been absolutely mental over the last few days. We’ve been speaking with James Marriott who has been giving us some advice. Wes from Love Island has been liking our stuff as well which is crazy it is reaching those kinds of people already.
Mac: It is nice to see it is pushing it to these sort of people but also a contrast in different people with different music tastes responding to it very well. We were in the studio and we bought some lights, filmed a load of content for the song and we’ll release it on socials. I mistakenly uploaded a 32 second video, which I thought would be a bit too long for short form content, but I ended up leaving it anyway. It ended up with nearly 300,000 views already.
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What else can people expect from Bank Holiday for the rest of the year?
Luke: We’re going to release music as much as we can. Probably 5-6 songs a year.
Mac: Bands/artists make people wait for new music but I don’t think it works. I think you should give people what they want. We’re in the process of booking another gig as we speak. It is very much in the early stages.
Luke: We have another single ready to go. We’ve got a few tunes actually, then we’ll go back into the studio writing over the next few weeks.
Mac: ‘Out of the Blue’ does have a music video coming out too, which will be cool.

