Daytime TV hit the ground running in 2026 and has continued to smash it! The alternative quartet are set to headline various venues across the UK this October in association with Music Venue Trust and Marshall ‘Keep Live Music Alive’ campaigns to help keep the grassroots music scene thriving. Pair this with a great record label and their brand new single ‘Sun’, and it’s safe to say there is plenty to talk about.
I had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with their singer, Will Irvine, who gave us an exclusive insight into the world of Daytime TV. What could earworms, canopies and putting your drummer in a bright orange monster suit possibly have in common? We’ve got it all right here!
Let’s talk about your latest single, Sun. It’s catchy, punchy, and it sounds like summer. What was the inspiration behind the track?
WILL: So, it’s funny, we wrote a lot of songs last year, and that one, I had that chorus for like three years or something before that, so I’d be singing the line “Island in the sun, ” and I just sort of parked it because I didn’t have the rest of the song yet. I just kept finding myself singing that bit over and over and over again. Like years later.
MARS: “Oh, it’s an earworm.”
WILL: Yeah! That can sometimes be a bad thing, but I was enjoying it when it was popping into my mind. I was thinking, “Oh, this is cool.”
WILL: We finished it off, and it’s about going to a happy place in your mind. Or trying to anyway, when everything’s kind of, you know, the world feels like it’s sort of on its knees at the moment. We’ve done a lot. We normally would come at things from a slightly darker angle, but I really wanted to write a really happy song. And we should be able to do that, you know, you don’t have to be all like edgy and dark all the time. We took ourselves a little bit less seriously, and we just wrote a sort of fun, as you said, it feels like summer. It’s kind of that, that’s what we wanted, something that feels really up and happy.
Tell us who Daytime TV are.
WILL: If I knew that, I mean…We started just kind of after COVID, basically, and we started as a rock band, you know, guitars, bass, drums. And the first music we released was very much more classic in the kind of rock thing.
And I think we just went through a few things as individuals and as a band, and really wanted to push the boundaries of what that can look like, what a guitar band can do or a guitar band can be perceived as.
So in this new music, we’re really trying to sort of reach as far as we can into ourselves as artists to present something that isn’t predictable. I don’t know, it’s just us, you know, it’s truthful of us, and we’re not trying to impress anyone, we’re not trying to open any doors. We’re just trying to be artistic. That sounds really simple, but I think when you start in a band, there’s so much pressure to sort of get certain things right, climb the little ladder and so you when you’re writing you can be pressured into trying to write something that this type of person might like or let’s write something that might open this door and it’s it just doesn’t work like that, obviously, but it takes going through that and making the mistake to work out that you should just be an artist and so that’s what we’ve done and we’re now in a really, really fun place.
We’re all really enjoying where we’re at and kind of just trying to push these boundaries and, you know, just enjoy being in a band together, and we’re lucky enough to be playing quite a lot of cool shows, and we’ve signed to a really cool record label. Yeah, we’re in a good spot.
You’ve pretty much just come back from South by Southwest London. Huge, amazing. What can you share about that experience?
WILL: It was so good. I honestly thought, like..If I’m honest, I always slightly get the ick with, like, the sort of industry. I like playing, you know, I’ve got nothing against people in the music industry, obviously, but I like playing shows to people that are there to listen to music or be there to escape or for the same reason anyone would go to a gig and be excited for a band, whatever it might be. Whereas, sometimes these industry things can be quite stale, especially in London, it can be quite like, you look at a bunch of people with their arms folded and you think, “Oh God.”
But that South by Southwest was actually the complete opposite of that. It was in this amazing sort of outdoor, cool thing in Liverpool Street. We got them bouncing! I was really impressed with it. Like, I wanted to go around and shake everyone’s hand afterwards and be like, “You’re a good music industry person!”
There’s just this stigma of people kind of quite happy to just stand and take it in. Whereas this lot went for it, and it was great! We met lots of cool people, and it was very different to a normal gig. It was like super business-y, talking to all these like important business people, which is so not my world. But I try my best.
There were canopies. There were cocktails. It was great.
One thing that really strikes me about Daytime TV right now is the visuals in your music videos. Each one seems to tell its own story. How do you bring these visuals to life in such a big way? Is there anything that you’d like the fans to know or notice?
WILL: I mean, to me, we’re kind of at the beginning of a journey of this new music. So By Pause was the first thing of this new, not era, but like this new body of work, I guess. Each song totally has its own thing going, which I love because it’s the way we write, but we kind of don’t. We don’t go, “Oh, we’ve got like three bangers here, so they’ll be the singles. And then everything else can kind of just be sort of similar, but not as good.”
We want every song to have its own moment, and it has the potential to be someone’s favourite song or, you know, a song that’s important to somebody. And I mean, the visuals are, it’s just us having fun, basically. With Sun, like, we were in the studio, and the producer Pete Hutchings said, he’s like, “Oh, man, this just feels like summer. I’m just picturing this like a big, sort of furry monster, like running around the beach.”
And we were like, “Oh, that actually should be the music video.” When you’re with a great record label, you can kind of take that idea to them, and they go, “Yeah, sure, we’ll pay for you to build a ridiculous orange suit and get someone to film it.”
So that’s a really, really cool thing of them backing our creative decisions, you know? But yeah, it was pretty funny with the suit because we had a dancer booked for it. And so we’re all like, we don’t need to be in the suit. This is great.
And the day before the shoot, we got this message saying, I’ve just heard that, because our manager was chatting to the dancer, he said there are a couple of things that are a bit awkward about the suit. Number one, you can’t see out of it when you’re in the suit. So you can’t see anything.
MARS: “Oh, no.”
WILL: And the dancer was like, “I’m a professional dancer. Like, I can’t break my legs,” so I’m pulling out, which is so fair. So they pulled out the day before, and so we were like, right, who’s going in the suit? And luckily for me, I was too big for the suit.
MARS: “Oh, I was guessing it was you.”
WILL: To be honest, like, as soon as that happened, everyone was like, you have to go in the suit. I was like, I was ready to take it on. But I tried the suit on, and it was just, you could, like, see, when I was wearing it, you could see my shoes.
MARS: “It gives up the illusion.”
WILL: Yeah. And we couldn’t have that. We haven’t actually said this yet, but it was our amazing, probably not. If I were to rate us all as dancers prior to this video, I would have rated Gareth as the worst dancer. Gareth’s our drummer, and he rocked it in the suit. He’s been hiding it all along!
To be fair, Naomi had a little shot in the suit as well. She nailed it. But it was such a funny day, just like, because obviously they couldn’t see. So I was on the other side of the camera, with the director, and my job was to basically stop them from walking off a cliff or like walking into the sea or something.
So I’d be like, left, right. And they’re sort of just blindly walking around.
MARS: “Well, I’m putting on record now that I never doubted Gareth.”
WILL: Yeah. I mean, the trust that he had in us.
MARS: “Of course.”
WILL: Wow, yeah. I mean, he’s like sprinting at points. And he just can’t see anything.
MARS: “That gives me the fear. I don’t know about you.”
WILL: Yeah. Crazy guy. He really, he really outdid himself for that day.
You’ve had so much cool stuff going on at the moment. You’ve just signed to a new label, you’re going in a new direction musically, and you’ve also just announced your partnership with Music Venue Trust and Marshall to Keep Live Music Live. It means we’ll see you in Edinburgh, which is fantastic. What does it mean for Daytime TV to support a campaign like this one?
WILL: It’s huge. I mean. Just gigs now, for any normal person, you or me, it can be cripplingly expensive, A, to go to a big show of a big famous act. And B, they don’t tend to go to these towns that we’re now going to. So, you get the spine. The classic sort of London, Manchester, and Birmingham. Let’s go.
And that’s it. And so we just decided that for a couple of years now we’ve had so many people being like, “Oh, we’re desperate to see you play, but you never come anywhere near where I live.” We’ve been guilty in the past of sort of following that classic line of venues. I just thought, it’s so important that these venues stay alive so that, grassroots, new bands can form in those towns, they’ve got somewhere to play, people have got somewhere to go to socialise, to let off some steam, to hang out, to meet people, for there to be a scene in the music industry there in that town. To be able to go and play like Coventry, like Bournemouth, Hull, Newport, is so cool. I can’t wait.
I feel, you know, myself being from a tiny village, I know the feeling of when someone bothers to come to your town to do something. My first gigs were in Aultbea Village Hall, watching bands that had come up and were doing gigs in the village halls around the Highlands. You’re just so up for it because you’re thinking someone has come to my town.
I’m not in any way trying to say that Aultbea is on par with Hull or Coventry or anything like that. I acknowledge that those are cities that are much bigger places, but it’s cool to be able to kind of do our tiny bit to try and keep that scene alive.
Live music to us is why we do this. So it’s kind of the best fit, and if we can help that thrive throughout more of the UK, then yeah, as soon as it was mentioned to us by Marshall and MVT, we were just like, 100%. Let’s do it. I’d like to think, you know, as we sort of grow, you see some big artists still do it, the likes of Sam Fender. I think he’s quite good at it. Does some sort of low-income tickets.
Also, just accessible. Music shouldn’t be exclusive. Music is one of the sort of bedrocks of human life in my eyes. I think it brings people together, and the more we can do to promote it everywhere and let everyone have access to it, the better.
Are there any bands that you’re excited about at the moment? Any recommendations for the playlist?
WILL: I’ll tell you what, there’s a band, it’s a great Edinburgh band that’s new, and they’re getting started. I know their manager quite well. I haven’t actually met the band, but they’re really good. They’re called Fright Years.
MARS: “Okay. I think I’ve actually seen them about.”
Yeah. Check them out. They’ve got a great song called Stars. I also heard a band. I Shazamed something in a cafe the other day.
MARS: “Do you use Shazam? Oh my God, I feel like I’m the only person left alive that uses Shazam.”
WILL: Actually, to come clean, I didn’t actually use Shazam because I didn’t have the app, but I wrote down and Googled the lyrics of the song, and then it came up.
MARS: “Is that the modern-day Shazam?”
WILL: Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, it seems like more effort. Maybe the Shazam’s better. Anyway, that was a band called Drugdealer, which I’d never heard of before. And the song was called Honey. It was a collab with a band called, I don’t know if I’m pronouncing this right, but it’s like Weyes Blood.
Drugdealer, Honey with Weyes Blood is really good.
I really like the new Mystery Jets song. I don’t know much about Mystery Jets, but I heard their new song Black Dog and was just totally bowled over by it. So that’s really good.
There’s a band that a friend of mine is in with one of the guys from Greta Van Fleet. He’s the guitarist from Greta Van Fleet, and my friend Chris has started a band called Mirador.
And they’ve got an amazing song called Must I Go Bound, which is like very, very chill, but it’s really good.
Yeah. So there are a few recommendations!
Finally, what is next for Daytime TV? We’d love to know what you have planned for the rest of 2026 and beyond.
WILL: Yeah. We’ve got a lot planned. We’ve got, as I said earlier, this music is part of something bigger that we’re kind of building towards. There’s going to be more work because we really backed all the tracks that we’ve been making. There’s definitely going to be more singles released this year. I would say multiple more singles this year. Leading to something that you can make up your mind about, what that might be. And yeah, we’re going to be out. Obviously, we’re doing this tour.
Aside from that, we’re going to be getting out to some cool new territory we’ve never played before, so we’re heading out to Scandinavia for the first time, which is very cool. I’m super excited about that. And then, there’s a possibility of maybe jumping on one or two support tours as well, which would be very fun, but that’s kind of in the works.
But mainly, giving people what they want and releasing more music, which we’re very, very excited to do! And hopefully more cool visuals.
And no more Gareth dancing, that’s for sure.
MARS: “No more?”
WILL: No more. That’s what I’m saying…Unless you want to see Gareth dancing, you have to come to a show.
MARS: “Well, you are coming to Edinburgh. We’re looking forward to it!”
We’ll be keeping our eyes peeled for the future, and you should to! Daytime TV are one to watch. Thank you so much to Will, Daytime TV and their team for having a chat with us.
Daytime TV Tour Dates 2026
October 14 – Hull – New Adelphi Club
October 15 – Coventry – Tin Music and Arts
October 16 – Newport – Le Pub
October 17 – Milton Keynes – Crauford Arms
October 18 – Bournemouth – Bear Cave
October 28 – Liverpool – The Quarry
October 29 – Sheffield – Yellow Arch
October30 – Edinburgh – Cabaret Voltaire
Want more? Find them at @daytimetvofficial!
