One of the most exciting up-and-coming bands, The Guest List have spent the last few years shaping their identity and finding their signature sound. Hailing from South Manchester, the five-piece have built their own sound while paying homage to the city's iconic musical history. With their upcoming debut album Something Real on the horizon, frontman Cai Alty is confident that the band will make a strong statement in the indie scene with their new album. 

Before The Guest List existed, Alty was simply, a teenager obsessed with the guitar. "I wanted to be like a virtuoso guitarist, like Slash or David Gilmour," he reminisced, reflecting on his first band, Public Opinion, which he joined when he was just 13 or 14. But when the first COVID-19 lockdown brought rehearsals to a halt, circumstances forced him into an unexpected role: “I started singing and then coming out of that lockdown I kind of realised that I didn't want to write songs that someone else was going to sing, that wouldn't really sit right with me.” That realisation eventually became the spark that formed The Guest List: “So we formed a new band, me and the guitarist from that band, formed The Guest List with Angus Gilchrist, who's still the drummer in The Guest List.” Tom Quigley, Leio Hunter and Sid Wallace then completed the lineup that has remained together for the past four years: “I think you have teething problems for any band that starts that young, because the truth is, it's not as easy as just, 'I want to be in a band because it sounds like fun'. You realise that you have to be fully committed to this to stick with it.” That sense of commitment runs through everything The Guest List does.

When asked to describe the band in just three words, he doesn't hesitate: "Honest, ambitious and thoughtful." Those three qualities stand out in 'Something Real', an album that refuses to be tied to a single concept. Instead, each song explores a different perspective, allowing listeners to discover their own connection.

"It's encouraging that everyone seems to have a different favourite," he says, "I hope each person who hears it finds a song which they personally feel understood by.”

While many of The Guest List’s lyrics explore personal experiences, others step into a different life, far from his own: “Some songs would be inspired by things that would happen in my own life, but then a lot of them aren't. A lot of songs are more narrative-based, trying to understand the perspectives of other people.” Tracks like ‘Mary’ were written through empathy rather than experience: “I think trying to understand somebody else's perspective through songwriting helps you grow as a person," he explains. "If a song starts taking you somewhere difficult, it's probably because you care about that subject. You shouldn't shy away from it." Despite several tracks already released as singles, the unreleased track he is most excited for fans to hear from the upcoming album is ‘Slow Down Sally’, which has purposely been held back until the album’s release. The track was co-written with bassist Leio Hunter: “We've had it for a long time. Leio wrote the first part of the chorus, and I wrote the second half, and I honestly think it's got one of the strongest choruses on the record.”

Recording the album in Norway was part of the unique experience that gave ‘Something Real’ its identity. Rather than recording in Liverpool’s Kempston Street Studios, the band travelled to Norway to work with producer Matias Tellez, who boasts working with a catalogue of musicians including Girl in Red and Aurora: “I think you can hear that influence on the production of the album, which is cool and gives it a different angle the to the stuff that you'd hear from other bands in our circle.”

Away from the studio, life on tour has brought its own lessons. Supporting the likes of Blossoms and Inhaler showed the band that longevity isn’t just about putting on amazing shows; it’s about learning to live with the pace of touring: “You can't be on edge for each show; it needs to feel regular and normal even though it's not a very normal thing to be doing. So I think we learned that from them, to settle into the lifestyle of touring, and take each day as it comes rather than focus on the next two weeks where you're going to be playing a show every night.”

Before every show, however, one ritual remains. If time allows and backstage chaos doesn’t interfere, U2's ‘Bullet the Blue Sky’ still soundtracks the final moments before they walk on stage. When asked what he hopes fans take away from the experience, his answer wasn’t about sold-out venues or social media moments. "To see a song that people maybe have been listening to day to day, going to work or to school or whatever, to be able to have that experience at a gig, I think can bring out the weight of a song in a way that you don't hear. It's kind of like hearing it again for the first time, which I think is nice."

That humble outlook extends to the band's ambitions. Red Rocks, Manchester Apollo, the Royal Albert Hall, Primavera Sound and Lollapalooza all feature on the bucket list of dream venues, but the band are no longer measuring success by milestones alone. When asked about the future for The Guest List, Alty says thoughtfully, “I would just hope that in five years we were still putting out music that we wanted to make. There's always a lot of pressure, and the more of a fan base that you grow, the more pressure there is to sound like something because fans often will be disappointed if they like this first album that we do, then it can feel claustrophobic when you come to make a second album because you don't want to disappoint them in making something which sounds completely different.”

For The Guest List, they’re inviting listeners into the world of 'Something Real', not a world shaped by expectation or nostalgia, but by honesty, ambition, and the authentic stories will always find an audience.