It’s never too late to follow your passion. At least that’s what this group of youngsters, three engineers and one cook, have proven. Brought together by their common love for music, The Tapes was formed in June 2013 in Hyderabad.
“Our band features five members -- two guitarists, a bassist, a drummer and a vocalist. Except for the drummer, who’s a professional chef, all four of us are engineering students from Hyderabad who have this common passion for music and decided to start The Tapes last year,” shares Prithvi Mallepula, the guitarist.
Elaborating further about how the band established, he said, “Earlier, three of the current band members were a part of a band called Angst. However, they never had a constant drummer and they soon drifted apart. Funnily enough, I met the drummer at a tattoo studio and we started talking music and he agreed to come on board,” explains Prithvi.
Performing Indie and old school grunge music, The Tapes have entertained audience across the city in places like IIT Hyderabad, Rain, Lost Society and IIIT Hyderabad, among others. Prithvi, however, feels that Hyderanad has a long way to go as far as the music scene is concerned.
“In my personal opinion, the music scene in Hyderabad can be a lot better. Most of the people performing are heavily metal-oriented. The audience too does not get to listen to different things. We are trying to change this around with our brand of music and hopefully it’ll be appreciated,” shares the 20-year-old.
Apart from 12 original compositions, the band also performs covers of popular bands like Kings of Leon and Oasis. Prithvi finds the originality more rewarding. “We are a completely original band. We have 12 own compositions and we are not a cover band by any means. However, we have been inspired by bands like Nirvana and Foo Fighters and keeping the audience in mind, we will be dishing out a few cover songs as well,” he shares of their performance this evening.
The band has had their fair share of success and find themselves ranked second in ReverbNation charts, an online portal for independent musicians to upload and share their music. Conceding that social portals have a great impact on indie music, Prithvi says that he prefers using Soundcloud.
“These social portals are very helpful. Souncloud, in particular is very good. ReverbNation works for some people and doesn’t work for some. I personally prefer Soundcloud as it is much easier to use. Also, ReverbNation’s agenda is to promote themselves and our inbox is usually flooded with advertisements and other such emails from them,” opines Prithvi.
Apart from performing in several gigs across the city, the band will also feature in an upcoming Tollywood movie starring Ram Charan Tej and Kajal Aggarwal. “One of our songs was used in a sequence in director Vamsi Krishna’s untitled film. We shot for seven to nine hours straight and it was an incredible experience. To see Kajal Aggarwal dancing to one of our songs is an experience I’ll never forget,” gushes the guitarist.
Apart from Prithvi, the rest of the line-up constitutes of Sri Hari, K Pranav, Abhay Y and Priyam Rico. However, today’s performance will be their swansong of sorts as their drummer Priyam is set to leave the band.
“Priyam is shifting to another city for a job, so he will be leaving the band soon. This will be our last performance together and we want to make it a memorable one,” he concludes.
You can catch The Tapes today at The Hard Rock Cafe from 8:30 pm onwards.