This is a good time for live music, says indie music band When Chai Met Toast

Ashwin Gopakumar and Achyuth Jaigopal of When Chai Met Toast talk about the band’s musical journey, the rise of live music, and the need for musicians to come together and jam.

Friday September 01, 2023 , 7 min Read

Kochi-based indie music band When Chai Met Toast is basking in the success of its international tour across the United Kingdom and the United States.

The band is especially thrilled about its show at The Garage in London—considered an iconic music club and venue for indie music and rock and pop acts.

“We were sold out at the venue this year. It was good for us, we’ll cherish it for a long time,” says Ashwin Gopakumar, the vocalist of the band, in a conversation with YS Life.

The band members believe it's a great time for live music in India too—with several music festivals happening across the country, bringing local artists and singers, and audiences showing up in large numbers to listen to them.

“Live performance is booming in a huge way … It’s a good time to be in the music industry,” says guitarist Achyuth Jaigopal.

Formed in 2016, When Chai Met Toast is a quartet well-known for its upbeat and heartwarming numbers such as Joy of Little Things and Khoj and introspective ones like Who Are You. While its music is primarily in English, some of the songs are also interspersed with Tamil, Malayalam, and Hindi lyrics.

Much like its name—which signifies the coming together of Indian and Western elements—the band’s music is reflective of the union of indie folk and alternative rock with strong pop and electronic influences.

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Recently, When Chai Met Toast was in Chennai to play at the Covelong Classic Surf, Music and Fitness Festival, held at Kovalam beach. The show was a big draw, with music lovers braving the rains and the traffic pile-up along the East Coast Road to throng the beautiful beachside venue and watch the band perform live.

YS Life caught up with Gopakumar and Jaigopal ahead of the show for a chat on their musical journey, the rise of live gigs, band culture, and more.

Edited excerpts from the interview:

YS Life (YSL): You are seven years into your musical journey. Can you describe the journey so far?

Ashwin Gopakumar (AG): It’s been fun, emotional, and happy-go-lucky. It’s also been a lot of tedious travel, a lot of quarrels, bonding together, eating together, and making food together. It’s been quite like a family.

YSL: You have a loyal fanbase across the country and internationally too. How did this come about?

AG: I think we’re just lucky, to be very honest … Probably, it’s the feeling that each person resonates with that we write about. Also, we’ve kept playing live gigs through the years. That has helped us get more people to listen to our music.

Achyuth Jaigopal (AJ): It didn’t happen overnight. It’s been a long journey. Last year, we recorded our EP (LYTS – Love You the Same) with UK-based producer Richard Wilkinson. When we were doing that, we tried to build some contacts. We met a lot of people from the industry and did a few shows. All that kind of helped us.

Then we did a tour again this year in the UK and the US. It’s been a dream of ours to slowly expand from just playing in India to also playing at festivals outside India.

YSL: You’re a multilingual band. Do you think this is perhaps why you have been able to reach a wider set of listeners?

AJ: It has definitely helped, especially for Indians, who are our primary diaspora of listeners. They relate to this model—with the bits of regional languages—be it Tamil or Hindi. But it wasn’t something we consciously did. It sort of came about and fit naturally into the songs.

AG: But primarily, we think in English when writing our music. That’s how we go about it. It (use of words from other languages) goes from song to song, if it fits well for a song.

YSL: Where do you get your creative inspiration from?

AG: It’s from the people around us, where we are, or what we are doing at that time. Some songs come at the moment, others take time. We write about our emotions. It all comes from a place where we honestly write about what we feel at that point in time.

YSL: Are live performances coming back in a big way?

AG: Recently, I met somebody who talked about ‘revenge tourism’. I think that’s also affected the entertainment industry. During the pandemic, people couldn’t see live performances. So now, they are coming out a lot to see them.

And it’s also opened the doors for a lot of international acts to come to India. Festivals like Lollapalooza and others are coming to the country. It’s definitely in the boom.

AJ: Indian acts are also going international to perform for international audiences.

YSL: Do you think music bands have a shelf life?

AJ: It’s too early for us to say that. We’ve sustained for seven years. It was a struggle initially, but we have been fortunate in the last few years. We have performed a lot and released our own music. And other bands are doing that too; Peter Cat Recording Co. has been around for 15 years. Ultimately, it’s about sticking together … as long as we’re able to retain the four of us.

AG: Streaming platforms have helped keep the music out there for people to listen. Even my dad listens to different kinds of music that he has never heard before, and he spreads it to others and asks them if they have heard it. With the help of streaming platforms, bands are not gonna disintegrate anytime soon.

YSL: What can be done to improve the band culture?

AG: People need to get together and jam more. When you have four different people, with four different heads, working on a song, it is so beautiful. When the music is from a band, it has a different union altogether … But some people want to stay by themselves and play.

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YSL: What’s your take on the role of technology in music today?

AJ: The good thing is anyone can produce or release music. You can just sit at home, write your songs, and submit them through distribution networks. You don’t have to go through a music label like you did back in the day.

The con is there’s less value given to the art of music itself. A lot of people are creating songs without learning music or what goes behind songwriting because technology is so easily accessible. Everyone can tweak their voices to make it sound perfect.

A lot of people have gravitated towards short-form content. These days, songs become popular only on social media. So, it’s really hard for artists who put in the work … hours of dedication and practice … to actually be heard. The attention span of people has also reduced drastically.

AG: People need to grow with whatever’s happening around them. Social media is a platform where you can promote your music. But it’s necessarily not a place where you actually make your music and put it out there.

YSL: Is independent music viable as a career?

AJ: All of us are full-time musicians. We are among the handful of bands in the country doing original music. Whether it’s viable or not, I don’t want to analyse too much. It could be a viable career, but maybe not for everybody.

AG: It depends on a lot of factors and not just the music. Whether you want to make it a career or not is your choice.