Friday, July 25th, Sound Stage had the opportunity to sit down with indie soft rock band, Feed the Masses, before their EP release show at Delmar Hall. The band discussed how they got started, who their biggest inspirations are, and the story behind "Closer Than You Appear." Check it out below.

SOUND STAGE: Tell us about Feed the Masses, how did you guys come together?

JASON: Well, [Lance and Kaleb] were in a band before this in high school. I was also in a band in high school. How old were you guys when you started?

KALEB: Around 15 or 16.

JASON: And I was right around 16 when I started my first band. I was doing my band thing up until college. [Lance and I] had been friends at that point for 10 or 11 years. It was kind of a shot in the dark because I would consider this man my best friend and making music with your best friend is something you don’t think about until you ask the question. So I asked the question and here we are. I’ve also been great friends with Kaleb for a long time as well, about eight or ten years. We came together for this project to make music we never thought we could stylistically wise. The bands we were in before were much more on the rock side of things. But now, we get to express our emotions a little more.

SOUND STAGE: So how long have you guys been doing Feed the Masses?

LANCE: I think two full years now? We have only put out two songs which came out at the start of the year.

KALEB: Except for today!

LANCE: As of today we now have 5! It is our EP release show today.

SOUND STAGE: Who are your biggest inspirations?

LANCE: I would probably say for me specifically, U2. I love U2. Oh, and Coldplay

JASON: Guitar wise, everyone says I take from the Edge. But I personally really love Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead. And also Kings of Leon. I love the melodies they play guitar-wise. My high school pick I would say is The Pixies, I try to draw a little from them.

LANCE: I really love Cage the Elephant, Inhaler, Fontaines D.C. Fun, new modern music I’m really into. Beyond drumming I like the whole electronic aspect of everything too. But growing up I was really into Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins that’s where I drew my style from.

SOUND STAGE: Walk us through Closer Than You Appear. What inspired the EP, what do you want fans to take away from it?

JASON: Wasn’t that a you name Kaleb?

KALEB: Yeah, I did some up with that one. We were brainstorming names for this EP for weeks, even months probably. Because as we were working on it, we were trying to come up with names for it as well. Nothing was really sticking. Our running name for it for a while was a lyric in the song “Time Flies By” which is “a moment in time.” I thought about that for a second, all these songs have their own feeling to them that they give off. They all have a direct emotion that they are trying to tell. They’re all different, not just lyrically but also musically. So, we went through all the songs and asked ourselves “what is this song saying?” I think what popped in my mind when we were deciding what every song meant was looking at yourself in the mirror and deciding on what you want to become. It’s closer than it appears. It’s like whenever you are driving and you see the “closer than appears” in the side mirror. You’re always driving forward, trying to find who you are, that’s what it was based on.

SOUND STAGE: So poetic, I love it. We just listened to the new EP on the car ride here. We are obsessed. I love how all the songs are musically different. It keeps you interested the whole time. What are you most excited to play tonight?

KALEB: I would say we all have collective favorites. We actually have a lot of new stuff that we are playing tonight. We are playing two or three songs from the EP. There is a new song called “Hostage” that we are actually bringing back from the old band that we revised. I’m personally really excited for that.

JASON: I would say “Separate,” it’s near the end of our set. We recently kind of put the final workings into that song, and on a whim added it to the setlist. We tried it a couple weeks ago at a show and it was really well received and we felt insanely good playing it.

LANCE: I would say our first song “After This Life,” which is a new one we wrote recently. We’ve only played it once live and I’m just excited because it is the start of the set.

SOUND STAGE: Are you playing any songs you haven’t played live yet?

LANCE: “Time Flies By” which is the last song on our EP. We may have played once a long time ago before we even recorded it. This is our first actual rendition up on stage. That one I’m definitely a little excited for.

SOUND STAGE: What can fans expect for future projects?

LANCE: I’m hoping to release an album. All three of us talk about it all the time. That’s one of my goals, and I think all of ours. We want it to be a complete body of work, and conceptual. That’s on our radar. We are primarily trying to put our focus on YouTube and doing live videos. We have so many songs that only we know about, so we want to put them up on the internet and see what people think.