The band’s upcoming UK tour in May sould out in minutes and they are due to follow in the footsteps of The Prodigy, Bob Dylan and Massive Attack to become only the fifth act ever to play five consecutive nights at London’s legendary 4900-capacity Brixton Academy. They have also announced further headline gigs at the Millennium Square in Leeds and a bank holiday special at the Brighton centre, in addition to headlining the Hi Fi festival.

 

Their tales of the daily grind in their hometown of Staines has won them plaudits right across the music press. “I think the driving force to actually make something happen is that the town we come from, there’s nothing to do there. Staines is an insular satellite town. It’s close enough to the city that no bands will ever come and play there, they’ll always play London. So nothing ever happens there – we were bored of being skint, bored of being bored, you know, it’s that kind of place,” explains Richard Archer, the steely blue-eyed frontman of the group.

 

“I got together with Steve – he was playing drums for a DJ friend of mine doing remixes. Next came Kai who was working for Rentokil. He said to me, “I’m sick to death of killing things, I want to be in a band!” We then met up with Ross who was working at the local hi-fi shop. A month later, we did our first show; it came together really quickly after that,” he recalls.

The band produced ‘Stars of CCTV’ themselves which could be deemed an adventurous decision by a band just starting out. “We made the album for about £300, just by ourselves with broken down equipment. We did it totally by ourselves. You can either sit around and wait for someone to come and help you out or whatever, or you can just get on with it yourself. We just got on with it ourselves. We did this in a cabin in Staines. It was hard making it, definitely. One thing is that if you don’t have much money (and you’re doing it in your own studio), you do have a lot of time. We took our time to get it right. I think we have a sound that no one else really has. It sounded that good,” explains drummer Steve Kemp.

 

“Rich co-produced with a guy called Wolsey White, who’s just like a friend from Staines, who used to be in a band called Supermodel. He was doing some production stuff, so we got him in. He wasn’t a big time producer. He’s literally a friend of ours who Rich had spoken to down the pub. It turned out he was really great and Rich is a talented producer in his own right. We were just learning how to do it. We had no real experience in making our own record. It’s just if you have a lot of time and you try hard, I think you can do it.” Referring back to the aforementioned influences, he is quick to point out that there is a lot more to them than overused reference points. “We love the Clash, we’re not ashamed to say that, and the Specials – but there’s 25 years of music after that which is just as vitally important to what we do,” Rich affirms. “If you were brought up in Britain in the last 10-15 years, you’re immersed in dance culture, you can’t help it. It’s been the driving force of music that has come up with the most innovative and exciting stuff a lot of the time – so all that has played a part in what we do, as well as music before then, like 60s soul music and reggae. The Stones as well, you can’t get away from the Rolling Stones if you’re a British band. Massive Attack, The Streets, New Order, Run DMC, Public Enemy ...there’s all sorts of different stuff that has played a part.”

 

Northern soul seems to be a very big influence on the album. “I wrote a song a while ago and a friend said he thought it sounded like a Northern soul track. Then he gave me an album called ‘Out on the Dancefloor’ from the mid-80s with all these great tracks on it. It blew me away. I’d put it on if I was feeling down in the dumps – it’s just so infectious. It might be music that’s 40 years or 490 years old, but hear it on a big system and you get it.” Northern soul is definitely a style of music that was made to be heard on dancefloors. “Yeah, there’s so much going on,” Archer agrees, “great rhythm, great melodies, great vocals. You can hear something and think, that’s a great song, and then hear it on a dancefloor and feel the bass ...”

 

Bands currently seem to be making the most exciting, up-tempo, Friday night music. “We always listened to dance music. And you want to be able to dance to the record you make. Dance music has been everywhere for the past 15 years. You can’t have escaped it. We never saw ourselves as just a rock band. As soon as we did a track, we’d give it to one of our mates to remix – Axwell remixed ‘Hard to Beat’, Roots Manuva remixed ‘Cash Machine’ and Rong Tong did a dub version of ‘Tied Up Too Tight.”

 

Another factor in their seemingly sudden, and often refuted by the band themselves, rise to mainstream popularity is their accessible lyrical content, words which speak of the perils and trappings of urban living in the 21^st century. “The thing is when we were writing this record, no one was making music that said anything about our lives, said anything to us. We try and write songs about our lives, our friends’ lives, or things that move us in some way. Everyone’s experienced being skint, everyone’s had their heart broken, everyone’s hated their job at some stage, everyone’s wanted to escape their boring town and go somewhere new and exciting, everyone’s felt frustrated and hemmed in – it’s not just a British thing, all around the world there are towns like Staines. You listen to early Springsteen stuff, he’s singing about the same thing. It’s trying to connect with real people, rather than a cool little clique.”

 

“It was bonkers, but it was great. It was the first year they put guitar bands on and it was a fantastic idea. A lot of people who got into clubbing only know clubbing. But there’s something about a band onstage and the fact that it could go very wrong at any minute. We went on at five in the morning and everyone was out of their box which is always a good thing when you’re playing. They went nuts and there were people from all over the world there, getting it. That was a real moment for us,” Rich reminisces.

 

“New Order listened to early house stuff and came up with something amazing, the Stones listened to blues rhythms, and we’ve always stressed that we’re not only a rock band. People were connecting with it in Ibiza. It was great. Dance music feeds off guitar music, and there’s no reason why guitar music shouldn’t feed off dance music.”

 

The summer of 2005 also saw the band play Notting Hill Carnival supported by Don Letts from Big Audio Dynamite and Mark Ronson. “That was another highlight. It was a tiny stage underneath Trellick Tower. The PA was on the edge of blowing up, and there was no-one there an hour before we went on. Just heavy dancehall tracks playing. We were thinking, we’ll have to write a dancehall track and play it for an hour. But when we came on the place was mobbed. And it got busier. It was raucous. Mick Jones from The Clash came up and said hi. I was like I’m here at the Notting Hill Carnival with Mick Jones and Don Letts. Weird. Amazing.”

 

Although they are still riding the crest of a wave with their debut, work is well underway with the follow up: “The new album’s pretty much already written – we had a lot of songs that were just being finished off when we were making the first album and just weren’t finished in time and songs written since then. We’ve got about 35 songs knocking about so far, and will write some more as time progresses.”

 

Archer reveals a possible shift in sound, “I think the second album is going to be a lot darker, I meant a lot of things have happened in my life that aren’t all sweetness and light.” Their cancelled Glastonbury appearance last year was due to the sad news that his mother had passed away, for one.

 

The fifth single to be released from their debut is ‘Better Do Better’, an epic split-up anthem that has become a huge fan favourite over the past 12 months and its release follows an incredible start to the year. With their Mercury-nominated album topping the album chart in January, Hard-Fi were also nominated in the Best British Group and Best Rock Act categories at this year’s Brit Awards while ‘Stars of CCTV’ has sailed past the double platinum mark. When is Wembley Stadium due to be finished again?