In Conversation with Bears in Trees

English band Bears in Trees was founded in 2014, with band members Iain Gillespie on bass and vocals, Callum Litchfield on vocals, Nicholas 'Nick' Peters on guitar, and George Berry on drums. The London-based band successfully cut through the noise there and built a thriving online community and fanbase over the years. They have multiple tours, albums, and EPs under their belts. Their latest EP releases are "Success Is Unlikely" at the end of 2025 and "Success Is Monumental" at the beginning of this year. Following the release of both EPs, they toured across Europe with their "Tour Is Unlikely" tour!

We sat down with the band before the doors opened at their Hamburg stop, which was the last one of the whole tour! We talked about multiple topics, such as their tour, their shows being a safe place for many, and their views on Social Media's impact on the music industry.

HERE'S THE FULL INTERVIEW:

Thank you for sitting down with me. I'm excited to meet you! To start off, who is Bears in Trees in four words?

Iain: Iain, Nick, George and Callum.

Nick: Yeah, that’s pretty good.

George: Dirtbag boyband.

Iain: Dirtbag boyband, that’s four. Yeah, we're gonna take dirtbag boyband.

Nora: Today is the last show of your current Europe tour run, so first of all, congrats on almost completing the tour!

Nick: Thank you so much!

Did you have a favourite show so far and a favourite city if you were able to visit?

Iain: I think it's very important for political reasons that we don't say any favourite city. I will say that it is wonderful to be able to go to so many places across Europe and in countries we're not from, and have people show up for us and sing our songs; that's incredible. Each show has its own unique vibe and it's just been amazing to be able to play all these shows. I do have to say that, since London is our hometown, that show was phenomenal, because we had our friends and our family in the audience, and a lot of our audience were in London. That was an incredibly magical show!

Nick: Yeah, this is our first European headline tour, so just going to so many beautiful places and having so many people sing our lyrics back at us has been incredible. We never imagined that would happen, so the mere fact that we're here, able to tour Europe, and have people come along just feels crazy and amazing.

The other band members agree with him.

Between the songs "Large Hadron Collider" and "Incredible Speed", fans come on stage to play Mario Kart against each other. How did this come about?

Callum: My father was clearing out the cupboards at home and he was getting rid of the [Nintendo] Wii. I said you can't get rid of the Wii; this is a classic piece of technology. So I took it, and I had it upstairs, then we came in for rehearsals and we were just being silly. We were like, we can get people playing the Wii during this, so we brought in a Wii.

Nick: We did a couple of test runs of Mario Kart races because we originally wanted to just have it be Rainbow Road, but that takes too long to complete and is too hard to play. Then we wondered if maybe also during the set we could have it on and Callum and I could be doing a Wii bowling competition between songs, but that didn't work out because you cannot finish it in time. It went through a couple of iterations.

Iain: I also think that with Mario Kart, specifically, you, Callum, did a few edits on social media of "Incredible Speed" to Mario Kart races that you were playing. I think it's kind of a natural progression of how we use the Wii. The Wii was the inciting incident, and then we were just trying to work out whether it fit. It's been really, really fun; everyone's completed the song so far.

Do you have a fun fact from the tour you can share, or would you like to share one?

Nick: Callum, do you know how many Fugglers [small plush animals] you have collected on tour so far?

Callum: There are 8 along the front of the van, 8 big ones, and 2 burgers, and then I've got 8 little ones in my bag. Then one for each crew member, plus one for each band member. That's 36 Fugglers on this tour.

Iain: We're also trying to work out scientifically how to classify songs as wet bangers. Basically, songs by The Fray ...

Nick: … and Coldplay.

Nora: Yeah, I mean, they're a great band. I saw The Fray live last year, and they were amazing.

Nick: Normally, before we go on stage, we're listening to "How To Save A Life" by The Fray. That's what gets us pumped up for this tour specifically, it’s been a good time.

Nora: That's interesting, I wouldn't have thought of that song.

Iain: It's a big sing-along! You're getting your hands in the air; it's a wet banger.

With the recent increase in openness about how taxing touring can be for your body and your mind, what do you do on tour, after tour, and maybe before tour, to try to counteract this?

Callum: Fugglers!

Nick: I think because we've been touring for a little while now, we're getting pretty good at kind of how to keep healthy on tour. So just making sure, when we can, on our riders we'll have fresh fruit, vegetables, and little packets of electrolyte powder you pour into water after a show to help us rehydrate. You really need that after a show, you don't realise how tiring and taxing it is. Also, thank people we’re close, because we're pretty good at kind of knowing when to take space and time out for ourselves, I would say at this point.

George: Yeah, it's all the normal stuff you do to look after your body, but being really mindful of it. Making sure you're eating and drinking healthily and just getting as much sleep as you physically can, even when there are long drives.

Callum: I make Lego, it’s good mindfulness, keeps your mind weary, and has funny teeth. Look at the teeth on this guy.

Shows his Lego, which he’s building during the interview.

Iain: Callum has been driving this tour, so you probably tell him he's slowly going insane, more so than everyone else, but he's doing his best.

Nora: I mean, it's a lot to do with multiple stuff on a tour, I can imagine.

Iain: Yeah, everyone has to wear many hats; we all have to be doing lots and lots of jobs.

Nick: I think that's a good point! Also, on this tour, there are four of us and then Alex, our sound engineer, and Hayley, who is doing content and merch managing. Everyone's kind of super busy. But thankfully, with this tour, we've gotten really good at working together. I think it's a really good crew and a really good team and we're all just happy to get involved, which is really nice!

Nora: I'm glad, that sounds amazing!

Iain: Also ginger shots.

Nora: I also try to take them, I mean, they taste awful.

Iain: No, they taste delicious. They taste like my body is healing.

Among fans and non-fans alike, your live shows and band are known for being very welcoming. What do you think makes it, and why is that safe place important to you as a whole band or also individual people?

Iain: I think growing up, we always gravitated towards bands and spaces that felt like they were welcoming and accepting of us, spaces where we felt like we could express ourselves openly. I think it's not necessarily a conscious effort to be a safe space; we're not trying to be the band with a safe space and a welcoming audience. I think that's just who we are as people and the values we hold. People have just started to gravitate towards us to feel that safe space. I would also like to shout out our community for being so friendly and so welcoming! They turn up before we do sometimes to these shows and try and build these connections amongst themselves. I think that is the energy that the world needs more of. We put that out just from our natural values, and our fans are really amazing at consolidating that and building that themselves as well!

You recently released your EP "Successes Is Monumental". Did you have any challenges while doing so, or any moments that stuck out?

Iain: We had quite a lot of challenges whilst doing so, actually. [Recording] These two EPs, Success Is Unlikely and Success Is Monumental, were a period of time where we tried to bring everything back under our control, everything back in-house. Whilst that has been quite liberating, having that control over our staff and total artistic direction, it has also been quite difficult because we are only four people trying to live our lives. It has been quite time-consuming, especially for George, who's been doing a lot of engineering. I think it's been worth it; we're very happy with what we've got. What we have feels like the most Bears in Trees EP that we could make, and the fans seem to love it. All the hard work has paid off!

George: That transition period from full-time Bears in Trees to kind of back to Bears in Trees is not our sole focus in life, but we still want it to be; it's been a period of getting used to a new way of working.

Nick: Yeah, definitely!

Being from London, a city where lots of big artists are from and where there's also lots of up-and-coming talent, was it harder to stand out among your peers and did it put pressure on yourself?

Nora: London seems like a proper city whenever I'm there, so I can imagine it's not the easiest to try to …

George: … cut through the noise.

Nora: Yeah, exactly!

In an interview with Trill Magazine in 2024, Nick and Iain, you talked about Tik Tok’s impact on the music industry. You (Nick) were rather positive towards it, and you (Iain) had a more critical view. Did it change over time? And George and Callum, what’s your opinion on it?

Iain: I think for us, yes and no. I think that the internet is an ever evolving place and I think that it is both positive and negative, it's not like all incomes seems good or bad, it's constantly changing.

George: It’s a completely different way from marketing yourselves as a band. Historically, it would have been you go and play shows, and that's how you get in front of people. It's a whole other world that would never have existed before. In that respect, it's great and enables you to be seen and build a stronger community. The downsides are fairly obvious; it can be a pretty torturous experience trying to build that, and I think we've all felt the burnout from that. It's a very mixed bag.

Callum: Yes, I agree with what has been said! I think it is a mixed bag, the internet and technology in all essence lowers the barrier to entry for music, it's now much easier to record music. You can buy a £100 interface and a phone, make music on your iPhone, put it on the internet, and get famous overnight. But also, if everyone in the world could do that, there would be so many more people and so much more going on. So, it can be really daunting, terrifying, and scary to look out there and think, 'oh, we are now competing,' not that music should be a competition.

George: Then again, it's going through the noise; it's competing for other people's attention. When so many people are doing it, how do you be the one who is seen?

Callum: That is what social media is. Social media monetises people's attention; the currency is attention, so your job is to keep people on the app for as long as possible. In a way, it's all a competition, which kind of sucks.

Iain: We don't want that, it's how it is, right, and it's one of these things where we're online because that's where people are, and that's where culture is, and we are trying to participate in culture and create a safe, inclusive, and welcoming space. But the way online spaces have been constructed means there's a lot of noise, a lot of opinions constantly being thrown around, and a lot of stuff going on. It's very overstimulating and very oversaturated. While we're trying to do something positive, you do, unfortunately, have to operate within systems created by people who only care about harvesting resources like attention. Probably, we wouldn't have gotten to where we are without social media, without the internet, without technology, because the barrier to entry is lower; we can reach people not just in our neighbourhood but across the world, and we can create spaces that are a little bit more expansive. It's difficult to say which way or the other, whether it's good or bad; I think it's just a historical fact.

Nora: I mean, yeah, also for me as a photographer, obviously, I need social media to reach people just like you, but it also feels like a lot sometimes, the constant comparison, unfortunately.

Nick: 100%.

Nora: I try not to, but it still happens.

Iain: In comparison, we get told not to do it because it's not good for us. At the same time, it's everywhere; this information is given to you, and it is good because it means that you can build a business, but it's also bad sometimes because of your mental health; it's both.

Nick: As you said, the system incentivises it, which isn't good. The human brain is why, in such a way, social media companies know how to latch onto that, keep it coming back, and you view fellow artists as competition. It's really hard to get out of that cycle.

Iain: I think the last couple of years have been really trying to break out of the mindset of competition, we've been trying to break out of the mindset of comparison. Luckily, we've met so many incredible bands over the years and amazing people who show us that music is, to use a bit of a cliché, music is a mission, not a competition. We’re creating these big scenes and big communities internationally, and we're trying to support each other and build each other up. Trying to break out of that comparison has been difficult because the system's built that way. It's also been really, really important for us to refocus on what matters to us: creating art that people resonate with and creating a space where people feel safe and included in the scene. It's difficult, it's very complicated.

Nora: It’s also a constant process, I think.

Iain: 100%.

A more lighthearted question: back in 2019, I'm not sure who it was, someone on Twitter shared that the claps on "Heaven's Gate" by Fall Out Boy are from the TV show The Wonder Years, since they were recorded at the same studio complex. Do you have more music fun facts? Just random stuff.

Nick: Prince, before he died, handed a cassette of I think 100 unreleased demos to his [sound] engineer, which is kind of the lost forgotten Prince recordings, and they are still in that engineer's house. There are millions of people who would love to hear them, but I don't think Prince gave directions as to what he wanted done with these demos, and the engineer was just 'no they weren’t finished, Prince wouldn't have wanted people to hear them.' They were presents for the engineer. It’s like 'hey, thank you for working with me, here are so many songs I didn't release.' There's some other fun: the lead singer of the band fun., who did "We Are Young", has backing vocals on the Joyce Manor album "Cody". Which is crazy, because they're a Californian punk pop indie band, and he's credited on that.

Iain: I love the features on "Folie à Deux" by Fall Out Boy. I love the fact that Lil Wayne is on a song in that and no one knows that. When you hear it, you recognise it's Lil Wayne, but no one seems to know.

Do you maybe want to spill the beans on upcoming projects or anything you're excited for fans to hear?

Iain: I'm gonna specifically say no, we don't, we're really excited about what we've got planned for the rest of the year. We want to keep it exciting, and we want to keep it private [for now].

Nick: There will be something.

George: It’s gonna be flipping good.

Iain: We did just announce a tour in May in the UK and Ireland, that's as far as we're gonna go.

Do you want to add something similar to the shows, like the Mario Kart break?

Iain: During the tour? We haven't even considered that yet.

Callum: We started thinking about stage decorations. I made lots of mistakes during this set yesterday because I started thinking about them for the next tour. We've done lamps and the TV this tour; it feels like we can’t do that again, but we do like the lamps. I'm sure there must be something we can do on the next tour, which will be fun and interactive. We've done an inflatable boat race before, and it was quite fun.

Nick: We’re workshopping it; it’s an emerging effort. I don't know if we’ll do the Mario Kart again, because that's pretty specific, but we have to find a way to up that next tour, which will be hard.

Nora: I'm sure you'll find something!

Nick: I think we will, we won’t rest till we do.

THE UNSEEN has an artist recommendation playlist. Do you each want to add a song?

Nick: Oh, for sure!

The band members are taking out their phones.

Callum: "Turns Out I'm Amazing" by Carol Ades.

Starts singing how it goes.

George: I think one of my biggest songs for last year, even though the album came out two years ago, was "Lie, Lie" by half•alive.

Nick: I've gotten into a kind of EDM electronic artist recently called Ninajirachi, who released an album last year. The song I'd recommend from that is "iPod Touch", because I think it is such a good nostalgic song.

Iain: I’ve fallen in love with an album by an artist called Victoryland. The album is called My Heart Is A Room With No Cameras In It, and the song that I would recommend is "No Cameras".

LISTEN TO BEARS IN TREES' LATEST EP'S HERE:

LISTEN TO OUR ARTIST RECOMMENDATION PLAYLIST HERE:

WANT TO SEE MORE OF BEARS IN TREES? HERE ARE ALL THE PHOTOS: