Welsh post-punk outfit Adwaith are finding more well-deserved praise and success, recently. I sat down with Hollie (guitar, vocals), Heledd (drums), Gwen (bass) and Rhys (guitar) at York’s Fulford Arms to discuss music tastes, touring and writing approaches.

Asking a band who their influences are is a common interview go-to, but it’s information you can probably find elsewhere. Music they’re listening to now might show more about their current projects. Adwaith have no shortage of this, but it centres a lot around world music and pop, not to mention “2007 bangers” (very respectable). “We all have very broad music tastes,” says bassist Gwen, something they collectively think can be heard across their music.

Most of the band’s songs are written in Welsh, which you don’t see terribly often, but the reception of this from audiences outside Wales has thankfully been great – as it should be.

“I think we enjoy gigs outside of Wales more… back home, it’s quite a normal thing to see Welsh language bands.” The general response from other audiences seems to be one of positivity, a pleasant surprise at seeing a band perform in their national language rather than changing it for the sake of English-speaking audiences.

Adwaith seem to feel more comfortable touring away from home, stating that Welsh language music isn’t taken seriously sometimes by their Welsh peers. “It’s kind of funny,” says drummer Heledd, “you’ll play Glastonbury, and then you’ll get a pub asking you to do a £50 slot.”

On the back of this, they add that a lot Welsh people consider the language to be a school subject, “it’s not a cool thing to do.” Whilst there are obviously more Welsh language bands around, Gwen says that playing all over the world as one of those isn’t something that has really been done extensively, with the obvious exception of, say, the Manic Street Preachers.

Speaking of which, the Manics’ James Dean Bradfield does appear on a recent single Addo, adding guitar to the track. Whilst Bradfield never joined them in the studio (simply sending over his guitar part via email) the Manics have shown lots of support for the band. Adwaith have supported them live, and Bradfield remixed a track from their first album.

Heledd confirmed: “I think what they’re doing, has [influenced us].” Gwen added “they’re just icons. We’re very lucky they’ve supported us and wanted to play on our tracks.”

It’s safe to say we can expect a new Adwaith album later this year, although the name and specific details are currently under wraps. “We’re focusing on finishing the album now, really, and having time to practice the songs and make sure it’s perfect.”

A lot of ideas were written on DAWs. Prior to this, the band were mainly writing during jam sessions, entering the studio afterwards. “We don’t really make demos,” says Hollie, “we really took our time with this one.”

The writing process for the upcoming album appears to incorporate both methods. “Some ideas have stemmed from jams we had [following the previous album], but a lot of them are pretty fresh.” Gwen says they wrote a lot of the ideas on Garageband. In comparison to the old method, this way has given them “a lot more flexibility, different sounds, different genres… because you can chop around and change. I had a phase of two weeks where I had all these ideas down, I had about 20 of them.”

A few years ago, Adwaith played at the Future is Female Festival and launched their own ‘Femme’ nights, a series of 3-4 shows based on giving female musicians a platform/safe-space to perform. Whilst the band haven’t hosted any of these recently, they felt it was very necessary at the time. “Now, I feel it’s better to just be on a lineup. I’d rather see all genders on the same lineup because they all want to be there,” says Hollie.

“We started the band because there were no females writing music in the scene in Welsh. We wanted to inspire people, give women a space… and create something that we would have wanted to be a part of when we started. But now I think the Welsh music scene is very diverse… the music scene could always do with more females, but the need [for Femme nights] has gone a bit. People’s attitudes have changed loads since we started.”

For now, Adwaith are touring the UK. Glastonbury is unfortunately not on the cards this summer, like in previous years, but “next year’s gonna be the big one.”