INTERVIEW W/ The Clause: "We’re gonna battle with the big boys in the charts"

The Clause have been on the indie music scene for a while, livening up festival stages and releasing brilliant single after brilliant single, so their debut album is one we’ve been hotly anticipating. ‘Victim of a Casual Thing’, out 24th October 2025, is the story of them growing up, from their first gigs in Birmingham pubs to buzzing festival crowds and bigger and bigger venues. As an independent band, The Clause know they have their work cut out to make their mark on the industry, but we have a feeling they’re going to do it. 

We sat down with Pearce Macca, singer, guitarist, frontman and songwriter, to talk about the blood, sweat and tears that have gone into the album, being vulnerable, and their mega tour this winter.

Q: You’ve come a long way since you released your first single. How are you feeling now you’ve reached such a big year in your career? 

A: “Like every musician, doing an album and touring the world has always been the dream, and we’ve wanted this as long as we can remember. But we released ‘Sixteen’ when we were at school, and that was just a bit of fun. We wanted to put on a gig, and get all our mates to have a piss up in the cellar of a pub called The Rainbow. We weren’t trying to make our mark or start a whole career, it was just about having fun and doing those gigs. And once we took off a bit, moved on from playing to friends and friends of friends in Birmingham, we realised we could give this a proper go. Why not shoot for it? If it doesn’t work, it doesn't work, and we’ll have had a good time. So we’ve worked really hard since then. We’re completely independent, all the blood sweat and tears in this are our own. And releasing ‘Sixteen’ feels like a lifetime ago. I really believe that anything musical shouldn’t be rushed. If you rush it will never come out the way it should, and as an artist, you do yourself a disservice if you do it that way. It takes time to write songs and get them right. So although this album has been a long time coming, I’m glad we waited until we knew the time was right”. 

Q: What’s the response to the new tracks been like?

A: “We’ve been playing the new stuff as they’ve been coming out as singles. The singles have gone down so well live, normally it takes a while for them to click with audiences, but the first two ‘Elisha’ and ‘Nothing’s As It Seems’ have been really going well. We’ve had this album for so long, writing it and everything, these songs have been in my head for years in some cases, so it’s really nice to let everyone hear them”. 

Q: What process of bringing this debut record to life? 

A: “It all happened very organically, we knew for our debut offering we wanted it to be a showcase of the best music we’ve got. Everyone wants their first album to be a classic hit, so we knew there were some songs that needed to be on the album and went from there. So there are songs like ‘Fever Dream’, ‘I Don’t Care’ and ‘Weekend Millionaire’ that were written for the album but released on EPs previously. There was never a formal discussion about the shape of the album, or a plan of what we wanted to say. But when you hear it as a whole, it speaks for itself and has a really strong narrative. Although it’s not a concept album, it feels a bit like one, but the concept is the soundtrack of four young mates who went to school together growing from boys to men. We grew up in this band, it’s taken us a while to find our feet as songwriters and it didn’t happen overnight, but all the songs on the album are something we’re really proud of. There’s been songs we’ve been proud of before, but we wanted the album to come at a stage when releasing an album would blow us up, and hopefully we’re there now. We went down to London to Metropolis Studios to master it, and that was the first time we heard it front to back. It was just perfect, it was exactly what we wanted, which made it quite emotional. I think we’ve done it right, but I guess that’s up to public opinion. As an independent band, we’d really love to break into the charts. We’re gonna battle with the big boys”. 

Q: Do you write together or individually?

A: “We try to do things as collaboratively as possible. The majority of the songs on the record came from the shed in my garden, which I’ve made into a kind of writing/recording shed. I’ve been writing non-stop for a few years, and a lot of the songs came from those shed sessions. But it varies; our drummer Niall has such a knack for coming up with these little riffs every now and again, they just fall out of the sky, and he’ll make a demo and we’ll just be like, that’s it, let’s make that a song. The next single, and another song called ‘White Lifelines’, were written this way, and I think they’re two of our strongest songs on the album”. 

“It was really hard to pick the singles for this album, it was the subject of some pretty heated discussions in the group chat, which is hopefully a good sign. Or it means they’re all equally bad… But the response we’ve had so far, the fact people are instantly connecting with the singles, feels like a really good sign, and means they’re in for a treat when the album comes out”.

Q: Do you find it challenging to be vulnerable when you’re making music? 

A: “I struggled with being vulnerable when I was younger, turning emotions into words on a page and articulating how you’re feeling in music. I shied away from it for a long time, which probably means I wasn’t ready to do an album. So it’s taken a while to get there, but the lads and our producer Matt have really encouraged me to put my heart on the page and stop shying away from showing emotion. And pretty much every song on the record is me cutting my veins open and letting the blood drip onto the page. Lyrically, I’ve worked hard, and whether people like it or not it’s a piece of me”. 

Q: Where did the album name come from? 

A: “For as long as I can remember, I’ve been trying to think of a name for a debut record, and I could never do it, it just never came to me. I wrote this song ‘Never Ending Affair’  last year for the ‘Weekend Millionaire’ EP, and there’s a lyric in it that says ‘now I’ve become the latest victim of a casual thing’. We were listening to it back in the control room when we were recording last year, and Liam said why don’t we use that as the album title. And once he said that, we knew it couldn’t be anything else. It was lucky he said that cos I would never have picked it out, but it describes what this band is to us and the whole narrative of the album so well. I’m glad he was in the room to pull that one out. “

Q: What influences might we hear on the record?

A: “It’s really hard to pinpoint influence because the record as a whole is a product of our parent’s record collections, and the CDs we had when we were kids. Across the four of us there are so many different influences that have found their way in. From our indie core to disco, it’s all there somewhere. But Foals most recent album was on heavy rotation when we were writing. I think it’s such a maverick record. ‘The New Abnormal’ by The Strokes is such a great record, and ‘Favourite Worst Nightmare’ was on a lot too. We’re always gonna be big fans of Catfish and the Bottlemen, Arctic Monkeys, The Killers and people like that. That indie 2000s and 2010s genre, and that’s what made us. And I tip my hat to Sam Fender, lyrically he’s so good, he does what every lyricist aspires to. He’s getting to Alex Turner level, he can turn music into poetry. And Oasis this year, there’s so much energy around at the minute. I think if you really listen closely to the album you would be able to pinpoint what songs are inspired by who”. 

Q: Do you prefer playing gigs or festivals? 

A: “Nothing will ever beat the feeling of playing to a sold out crowd of your own, everyone’s there to celebrate your music. Everyone in the crowd has that in common, they like something you created. That feeling is untouchable, it’s like crack, you’ll never get away from it. Nothing beats that, sweaty gigs, sharing the love”.

“But this year and last year we’ve started to really appreciate festivals. Especially this year, the crowds have been so mad. We’ve been playing main stage where you can’t see the back of the crowd, or tents where people couldn’t even get in. So maybe in a few years I’ll change my answer”. 

Q: What's your dream venue to play? 

A: “Ever since we were kids, we’ve wanted to play at the O2 Academy in Birmingham. When we were 12 we did this school thing where we got to play on the stage, and I remember joking that one day we’ll be there for real. So that’s always been the dream, and it’s crazy that it’s going to happen this December. At the end of this year, we’ll have done it. It’s gonna be an emotional night really, there’ll be people there who’ve seen our whole journey. We’ve always felt the band is as much a community as it is our band, so that’s gonna be special. What a way to finish the year, and the album campaign, in that venue, with 3000 of our people. I’ll probably be fucking crying on stage. So if you’re into that, get down. But as a Villa fan I’ve got to say Villa Park too”. 

Q: What song do you think you’d nail a cover of? 

A: “We always jokingly said we would do ‘Tragedy’ by The Beegees. Or maybe a badboy cover of a Chappell Roan song, come out in Queen costumes”.