For those of our users who are not familiar with Shift, who are the members of Shift and what is the story behind the band?

The core members of Shift are myself (Rob Lambert) on vocals/guitars and Kori Barnett on drums, with several people handling bass duties for the recordings, depending on who's around at the time. On the EPs I also play keys and whatever else is needed for the songs. It's likely that Duncan Millar (a member from our previous band ../nadir.aspx" rel="nofollow - Nadir ) will play live shows - well, hopefully, I haven't asked him yet! And when we're looking to play live we're obviously going to need a couple more members.

The band started out more as a project: I had a bunch of music that was partly finished and rather than have the songs waste away on my hard drive I figured it'd be good to at least get them to a finished stage. I asked Kori if he was keen to help out and he agreed so it went from there. By the time we'd done the first few songs, it was feeling pretty good, so naturally I wanted to get the songs in front of some people and see if anyone else liked it.

When it came time to release the music I knew that I wanted to do things a bit different to the norm. The usual way is to play as many gigs as possible, put out a demo or two before maybe putting together a full album and shopping it to record companies - we've all been there before in other bands and I see so many amazing bands that have been playing to basically the same crowds for the last ten years, releasing albums, hoping to get some kind of break, but not really getting anywhere.

So I flipped it on its head a little by deciding that we'd write some music first, release it mostly online by giving it away for free and try to see if we could actually build an audience first before playing a show. The last thing I wanted was to start off by playing shows to virtually no-one, so I figured if people like the music, hopefully we'll get a decent enough following so that by the time we play live we might have a decent crowd to play to.

We are a band that literally started the on the day our website went up, which had Faceless ready to download straight away, completely out of the blue. Prior to that we hadn't even rehearsed together or played a live show, and we still haven't - though that'll change soon. We love playing live, so we're really starting to look forward to taking this music to the stage.

I'd say it has progressive elements but it's not wholly progressive. I love the way progressive music ebbs and flows and builds, and I listen to a fair bit of it, so that ends up coming through in the music i think, but it would be hard to call us purely progressive I think.

On your Facebook page, you state that the primary focus of Shift is one songwriting. How would you describe the songwriting process of Shift?

It almost always starts with a riff, or me dicking around on the keyboard with some weird sounds. Once I have something that I like I usually get a basic drum machine happening just to get a better feel for how it could go and add some more riffs and sections to it. A lot of the time I find that I can do about 3 quarters of a song within a short space of time, at least the basic guitar tracks anyway. Then I'll send it to Kori to see what he's got to say and he'll form some ideas about how he thinks the drums should go, or he'll record something and send it back. We'll go back and forth a bit forming ideas, but it's usually the last quarter of a song that takes a while to come together. Once we're happy with what we've got we'll take it to one of our bassists and we'll go back and forth a bit with them as well. Then I'll start work on the vocals if I haven't done so already, which will usually mean structure changes depending on what I come up with. Each time something new comes to the track, like drums or bass etc. new ideas start to form so I go back over and add or take away bits.

So far, the majority of the music has been written by me, but as we move forward I can see that changing somewhat. Kori is a pretty fucking decent guitar player, so he has some ideas that we'll be looking at, and likewise the bassists have some ideas that I'm keen to incorporate, so it may become more of a collaborative effort. I'm probably too much of a control freak to hand everything over though, and I'm enjoying having the level of control that I do. At the end of the day, even though I'm always asking the other guys for their opinions and ideas, I get the final say on what stays.

You have chosen to make both of your EPs available for free download. Is there any ideology, or a specific set of principles, behind this policy?

It was more a case of wanting to be accessible to as many people that liked our music as possible. It's hard enough to get established as a band nowadays, no matter how good the band is, so giving the music away for free reduces the barrier of people having to decide where they want to spend their money.

The other main goal is to get as many people as possible to a show, so we'd much rather give our music away if it means we could have a great show in front of a decent crowd, than be able to sell a few CDs and play to a virtually empty room. However, it does cost money to do this, so to help us get back some of the costs, we also offer a paid version, which includes higher quality audio and some extras for those that are kind enough to support us, or like us enough to want everything we release. It also allows people the option of choosing how they want to listen to the music. If it was me I'd probably buy a CD or download the .wav files purely for the bump in quality, but I understand that a lot of people might only listen to it on their iPods where the extra quality might not make as much sense, so we try and cater for all that.

The original idea stemmed from the likes of Radiohead and ../nine-inch-nails.aspx" rel="nofollow - NIN who had high-profile free releases, but as usual, we've tried to do it our own way to a certain extent.

You have also expressed that you prefer to remain independent of record labels. What is your view on the state of the music industry nowadays?

It seems as though it's struggling somewhat, and labels are possibly not going to want to take a punt on bands that might have a smaller niche audience. The indie labels might still do that, but for the most part I think the labels will be looking to play it safe and make sure the bands they back have catchy hooks and straight forward melodies, preferably going into a chorus within the first 30 seconds so that it appeals straight away. If that's what it takes then I'm not interested, I'd rather release albums where the music is the focus instead of catching as many people as possible. I find the best albums are usually the ones that take a while to grow on me, so hopefully that's the way it is when people listen to Shift.

I also actually see the Internet as an advantage in that way. I think a small niche band can do ok for itself releasing to a smaller niche audience, because the Internet has a much wider potential reach than traditional distribution methods. I've yet to prove it though as I currently lose a fair chunk of cash with each release!

It's possible that I would maybe consider some kind of publicity/distribution deal, as long as I keep the masters and retain control of the music, but yeah, it would really depend on a lot of things. At the moment I'm more than happy doing it the way we've done it, and the response has been awesome, so why change?

So where can those who are interested obtain Shift's releases, and where should one go if one is interested in learning more about the band?

Once again, congratulations on the release of Watch it Burn and good luck with the remaining two EPs.

Thanks! We're looking forward to spreading Watch it Burn far and wide and getting stuck into the next two releases.