Interview With Vista! (@ThisIsVista)
Can you tell us about how you formed as a group?
Wolf: Hope and I originally met while playing a show at the Stone Pony in Asbury park back in about 2011, then years later when she was in need of a touring drummer for her solo career she shot me a message and I started on as her touring drummer. We worked really well together, so her and I discussed the possibility of a band. I brought Brian, whom I had been friends with for years, into the mix as a guitar player/backup vocalist and the pieces just started to fall together.
Hope: I honestly didn’t want to start a band initially. I was very comfortable as a solo artist, but that’s where I realized the problem was. I didn’t feel challenged anymore. Wolf and I were on the same brainwave from the start, and that really set everything off and changed my mindset completely.
Can you introduce each member and their role(s)?
VISTA: Hope is the lead vocalist of VISTA and one of the primary songwriters. She’ll also be playing guitar occasionally for live shows and she does all of the band’s PR. Wolf is the drummer, he’s Hope’s songwriting partner, and he’s pretty much the jack of all trades in the band. He’s been tracking most of the instruments in the studio. Brian is the rhythm guitarist and also does backup vocals. Also, every promo picture he takes is a usable shot.
How would you describe your sound?
VISTA: We’re calling it ‘anthemic alternative rock.’ It’s something we sat down and kind of manually created on our own after listening to a ton of bands that totally inspire us. We spent a whole day sitting on the floor writing out lists of song elements that gave us inspiration. So we thought the biggest challenge possible would be to create our own genre, give it a name, and define that from scratch. It may work, it may not work. But it’s awesome to create something new and work to define what that is.
What’s your favorite song of yours?
VISTA: Hopefully we’re reading this question right…. if not this will sound soooo vain. But our favorite song in our catalogue so far is definitely “On The Brink”! Hope and Wolf wrote it specifically to be our first single, so it’s the overall absolute definition of that anthemic alternative rock genre. We’re also all really vibing on this new song we’ve been working on called “Mansions,” it’ll be on our upcoming EP!
If you could collaborate with any artists, who would they be and why?
Wolf: I would have to say Mike Schiavo. He’s such a great up-and-coming talent and if you haven’t heard of him you A) live under a rock and B) need to look him up!
Hope: He’s such a genuinely nice dude. I’ve played with him before. If anyone really deserves it, it’s him. But I’d love to collaborate with the guys in Set It Off, I’ve been hoping for that for a while. I kinda love Maroon 5, so that would be sick. Sia, Our Last Night. Those would be cool, too.
Brian: Same, I’d like to collab with Set It Off. There would be a lot of energy and excitement behind the creation.
Do you have any upcoming projects, shows, or anything else fans can look forward to?
VISTA: Our first single, “On The Brink”! iTunes kind of screwed up the release date, it was supposed to be out 3/4/16, but they didn’t finish reviewing it on time. So we have no clue when it’ll be up, it could be up when this interview goes live. But we have no idea! We’ll have an EP out in April that we’re currently working on, and we’ll absolutely be doing some shows towards the end of Spring. We release some random video content on YouTube a lot too, our photography Holly Turner is always filming. So in between all the gaps you can always check out the randomness on our YouTube channel!
What are your social media accounts where fans can follow you?
Band Twitter: @ThisIsVISTA
Band Instagram: @VISTAband
Facebook: www.facebook.com/VISTAband
YouTube: www.youtube.com/VISTAband
Individual Twitter/Instas: @hopevista, @wolfvista, @briankvista