Nila Bonda are a three-piece blues-grunge band from Brisbane who formed in January of 2013.
Who is Nila Bonda? We’re three kids who came together over an appreciation of sweet, sweet blues music. We pretty much started out as a blues-rock-ish trio but somewhere along the line melded into an alt. rock/ grunge-esque group. Don’t ask us what Nila Bonda means… we don’t know.
We sound like… I’m thinking if a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster had a sound then we’d be it. Many fuzz riffs, wailin' vocals, drums for days and tasty bass. Mmmmm hmmmm.
Our first gig was... At a .3unker event with the Unofficials, Rohan, Dead Sun, Waax and The Sentiments. We couldn’t finish our set due to a string-snapping incident, but it was still pretty rad nonetheless.
When did you settle on the group's name, and was it a unanimous decision... We settled on it pretty early on in 2013. It was a reluctantly unanimous.
In the studio we usually... Make obnoxious noises until the lovely audio engineers tell us to please stop. We haven’t spent any time in the studio recently, but we are gonna get our asses into gear any week now and get some recordings done!
If we could tour with anyone... Lindsay Lohan. We assume she’d bring us a lot of drugs. However, if Lindsay is in rehab (which we also assume to be the case) then we’d have to go with The Dead Weather.
The Dead WeatherSocial media is... Generally a hindrance upon society, but currently the best way to spread the word about gigs. Bummer.
My favourite app at the moment is... Uber. Holy shitballs, it’s so good. If you use Uber already then I don’t need to tell you why I’ve chosen this. If not, then you are welcome. To date, our most embarrassing moment was the time... When we played the worst gig ever. We refer to it as ‘the gig we don’t talk about’. We were off our game that night and we pretty much cleared the room. We were all sober, it was awful. Life on the road can be... We’re assuming a mixture of exhilarating and infuriating. We’ve never been on the road, but if there’s any philanthropists reading this, we’ll happily go… just sayin’.
If you'll have us on your bill, all we ask is that our rider contains... We are musicians therefore we drink anything you put in our hands. Having said that, scotch and beer are our general favourites ;)
The most scary scenario we've found ourselves in was... Getting mugged after a gig. Thalia knocked a guy out with her bass, TJ stabbed a guy with his drum sticks and Mitch downtuned his guitar so low that all the culprits were blown into the stratosphere by his doom-riffs. Alright, we’ve never actually been in a scary situation as a group but we’re obviously prepared for when it happens. When we’re not practising our instruments then we’re practising being a three-piece ninja street-fighting team.
What celebrity/ famous person would you love to be spokesperson of the band... Russell Brand, because his boots are glorious.
Russell BrandThree people you'd like to invite around for a dinner party... Thalia: The person I’d like to have over the most would be Douglas Adams, but that’s not possible so I have to go with Tony Abbott. I’m not going to tell you why because it’d probably get me on some kind of government watch list. TJ: Sofia Vergara. Mitch: Mitch is currently passed out in our band room because we had a gig last night, but he’d most likely choose Jack White to demonstrate to him the he can play his entire discography.
Sofia VergaraIf we were coming over to your place, what would you cook us? TJ and Thalia would cook you a feast fit for fucking kings. Mitch would cook you Maccas, beer, and a pack of Marlboro Reds.
No matter the expense, send me a case of... Hmm, tough question. An assortment of opiates please.
The last time I saw the inside of a gym was... Thalia went yesterday and is in a lot of pain today, Mitch says there’s a 24-hour gym near his house that has glass windows so he sees in there a fair bit… and TJ is having a Homer Simpson moment.
What's the one chore you dislike the most? Bathing our cats. It’s a war between human and feline that no one really wins. Kitty meow.
Nila Blada join Bree De Rome, Kellie Lloyd Music, Switchblade Suzie and others at Clutch — an event promoting ovarian cancer awareness — at the New Globe Theatre on Friday 10th October.
