Thomston release new single Expiry Date and announce festival dates

Thomston release new single Expiry Date and announce festival dates

Thomston has unveiled a brand new song, 'Expiry Date', in advance of his debut UK performance at The Great Escape Festival. Now managed by Saiko (Lorde, Mt Eden), this follows the success of the recent 'Backbone' EP, which went Top 10 on Hype Machine, premiered exclusively on Spotify, and saw the New Zealander surpass 6 million streams to date. Thomston will play his debut European shows at The Great Escape Festival, in Paris, Lowlands Festival and at Pukkelpop (more will be announced shortly).

Describing 'Expiry Date', Thomston writes: "When i released my first EP I was a nervous wreck. I couldn’t sleep and I didn’t eat much. So my manager booked me a day in studio, told me to turn off my wifi and focus on making a song to take my mind off things. 'Expiry Date' is all the things about this job that terrifies me. It’s the idea that pop stars have a shelf-life, the prospect of losing everything you worked for, but it’s also a promise to everyone on my team that i will work as hard as I can."  

Thomston is the solo alias of prodigious 19-year-old singer and producer Thomas Stoneman. He was born in London but largely raised in an Auckland suburb which hosts a rainforest, the bustling city-centre and black-sand beaches in surprising proximity. Growing up, music was synonymous with the enforced-tuition of classical piano by his parents, and so Thomston skipped the Top 40 in favour of whatever his shape-shifting childhood interests found their next outlet in (from acting, film-making to writing). One day, the offer to enter a nationwide songwriting competition got passed round school, and Thomston’s restless attention-span focused in on the smooth and melodic nineties-to-noughties RandB which his classical roots had once soured a love for. He won the competition, but the greater gain – the confidence and curiosity to write Pop songs – was still to come.

Taking the frustrations and freedom of small-town adolescence as a backdrop to the recent 'Backbone' EP, Thomston soon reached a crossroads of his own: he completed high-school the same year his songwriting flourished, with the gamble of music on one side and a sturdy potential degree to study Urban Planning at University on the other (“it’s all about patterns, which I find interesting,” he says now). In the end, Thomston’s choice was made for him when some early demos were passed to Lorde’s management, who offered to jump on board. And whilst 2015 looks set to take Thomston beyond the intimate but seemingly on-the-up New Zealand scene, his ‘Backbone’ EP is in part a polaroid-moment of before it all gets complicated – when a group of friends grow up together, reach a certain age, and just don’t know what will happen next.

May 12    Les Etoiles                    Paris

May 14    Great Escape Festival    Brighton (3PM, Paganini Ballroom || 8PM, The Arch)

Aug 20     Pukkelpop                    Belgium

Aug 21-23 Lowlands Festival         Netherlands

Sep 3-5    Sounddrive Festival       Poland

Sep 4-5    Offspring Festival          Copenhagan