Showing @ The Liquid Room, Edinburgh, Fri 18 Oct only @ 19:00

Hailing from Barcelona, Love of Lesbian are a five piece indie-rock band originally formed 1997. Since then they have taken on new band members and now the full line up consists of Santi Balmes (vocals and guitar), Jordi Roig (guitar), Joan Ramon Planell (bass and synth), Oriol Banet, (drums and programming) and Julian Saldarriaga (guitar and vocals).

The band’s first studio album Microscopic Movies was released in 1999 under the label Pussycats Record. This and their next two albums It is Fiction (2002 – Rock K) and Ungravity (2003 – Naïve), all contained lyrics written in English. It was with their first album written entirely in Castilian Spanish, Maneuvers Escapism (2005 – Naïve), that they garnered enough favourable press and coverage that they began to play to stadium sized crowds at international festivals.

Now hailed as one of Barcelona’s biggest acts, they have been the recipients of numerous in house awards and even won a nomination for Best Spanish Act at the 2012 MTV Europe Music Awards. Now touring their seventh studio album Eternal Night. The Unlived Days. (2012 – Warner Music), Callum Madge puts some questions to Julian Saldarriaga while still in Spain, ahead of their gig in Edinburgh’s The Liquid Room.

Why did you choose your band name?

We were trying to get the band noticed. That’s it. We were at that point where everything you do is for fun and you laugh about it. And when the band started being taken seriously and magazines were beginning to write about us, it was too late to change it.

Are you in favour of same sex marriage?

Absolutely. I think that we all have to be free to choose every single option of our lives.

What is the thinking behind the title of your new album?

We spent two-and-a-half years touring our 2009 album 1999. We had to live on the road, far away from our family, friends and normal life. This experience often made us melancholy and homesick and so we began to write about it. These feelings are what appears in La Noche Eterna / Los Dias No Vividos. On the flip side, when you’re playing with your friends night after night, playing sold out venues, you are living a kind of eternal celebration of life. You can also hear the sounds of this in songs like Si Tu Dices Ben. Yo Digo Affleck, 667 or Pizzigatos.

Does having six members ever present difficulties when making particular decisions?

We have known each other a long time and this helps when we have to make decisions together. When we all have to come to one opinion, we talk about it a lot. It takes a long time but we are still learning how to do it.

Now preferring to write in Castilian Spanish, you have previously referred to early albums being written in English as a mistake, why is that?

We spent too much time singing in a language that our public couldn’t understand. The lyrics form Love of Lesbian are an essential part of our successful situation. That’s why we think that those three albums we recorded in English were like a learning process.

Your song ‘Fantastic Shine’ was used in advert for Estrella Damm beer. Are there any products/companies you would refuse the rights to your music?

An election campaign would be too much for us.

What do you find most exciting about your position is society as ‘rock stars’?

That I am the owner of my own daily time.

What effect do you think Spain’s current economical struggles have had/will have on the Spanish music industry?

Not only is the music industry suffering from the effects of a policy of cut-backs, but also theatres, cinemas and other cultural events are all working hard to survive this current period of austerity. Others are having to shut down their businesses. The decision to increase the cultural tax to 21% is putting us in a difficult position. I mean in Spain, the youth unemployment is 56%! That’s why you can’t sell expensive tickets anymore, because the population doesn’t have enough money to pay for a show, buy a t-shirt or share a single beer with a friend each week. Instead they have to choose between the bands that play local to them, so promoters don’t take too much risk and don’t schedule new bands. The fear is in the air.

Billed as from Barcelona and with the growing strength of the Catalan political movement, do you see yourselves as Spanish, Catalan or both? Would you like to see an autonomous Catalonian state separating from Spain?

I myself feel more Catalan, just because I was born here. My family are from Colombia but I grew up talking Catalan. I walked in these mountains, I swam in these rivers and beaches. We ate the same food…you know that means a lot for the empathy. If you’re asking me how I would find a solution for our historical and political situation, I believe it’s better to get together, not to break a relationship. But it is also true that the current situation and the population in Catalonia just want to have the choice to decide. You asked me before about same sex marriage…I have the same opinion here.

For more information visit blogoflesbian.com

Follow Callum on Twitter @CWMadge