Yours Truly had just wrapped up a tour in Europe when frontwoman Mikaila Delgado chatted for this interview.
Although Mikaila says it's been great for the band to get back out on the road, this tour hasn't been an easy ride for them, thanks to the stresses of expiring visas and a handful of cancelled shows brought on by an unexpected hospital stint for Mikaila.Unexpected and character-building challenges have, however, been the catalyst that have shaped the pop-punk outfit’s forthcoming EP, 'Is This What I Look Like?'.
Since their inception in 2016, Yours Truly have changed dramatically particularly in their craft and adapting that for pandemic lockdowns.
Though they had performed acoustic shows in the past, one at Sydney's Crowbar in October 2020 saw Yours Truly attempt to give their debut album, 'Self Care', a full-scale launch within a stripped-back setting.
"...I don't know who I am without this band." - Mikaila Delgado
Though not the format Yours Truly hoped for the live delivery of the full-length record, they went with it, enjoyed it, and the experience taught them a lot. "I would love to do acoustic shows again," Mikaila says.
"I feel like being able to change the songs in a certain way and form them differently, that was not only fun for us, but I think it was also kind of a change for the audience as well.
"I [realised] that you are putting on a show for people regardless of whether it's acoustic or not and it's a proper show. . . people have bought tickets to see you, to be entertained or to hear the songs that they've listened to online and stuff like that.
"It definitely taught us that we should go above and beyond no matter what the situation is."
Since the release of their breakthrough single, 2018's 'High Hopes', a seemingly innocent offering that vibes on adolescent heartbreak, Yours Truly have experienced exponential growth, not just for their marketability as a band who are excellent musicians who draw crowds to their live shows, but as a community, as friends.
That progression is synonymous with Mikaila's personal growth too, a period which she lays bare through her vocals rapturous delivery across the EP.
"It was a very emotional time for me," she says, "and that's kind of why we called the EP 'Is This What I Look Like?'.
"It's a big self-reflection of my own identity and how much I struggled with [that] identity over the past couple of years. And how much of my identity I had tied in with being the singer of Yours Truly.
"It might not sound like much to anyone, but to me, it's what my life has been about since I started this band, and then to not have that in my life. . . Yeah, I really discovered during the pandemic [that] I don't know who I am without this band.
"A lot of my self-worth and how much I, you know, the things that I love about myself come from doing this.
"I think that this EP, like the lyrics are kind of like me exploring what I liked and I don't like about myself, and almost like getting to know myself."
Though she emerged from the chrysalis of self-conscious adolescence, Mikaila adds with a weary emphasis: "We've put in so much into this EP.
"The thing that really kicked us was COVID. Before COVID, everything was going so well for us; I hate to say this, but with not a lot of effort we put a song out that we wrote in a couple of hours – it was easy for us to write, and we found some success in doing things naturally, which is really cool.
"Suddenly we found ourselves overseas, playing all these shows with bands like Sum 41 and Senses Fail, bands we've always looked up to.
"Then COVID happened, and we put [2020 album] 'Self Care' out during the pandemic. Not being able to physically see what that was doing for us, I felt bad about it."
Mikaila found she was putting a lot of pressure on herself to maintain their pre-COVID level of success, even though things were far out of her control.
"There's this thing of every release you've got to build up a little bit more. We tried to do that with that album – 'Let's write the best pop-punk album we can write' – but then with this EP, we said: 'Why are we going to wait to build up to be the best possibly version of ourselves when we can do it now?'"
It was at that point when Mikaila allowed herself to go with the flow. "We always had this idea of doing a B-side called 'Self Sabotage', meant to be the darker side of 'Self Care'.
"[But] we were in this world where everyone's talking about self-care, but it was something that was very hard to do.
"When we started writing these songs [for 'Is This What I Look Like?'] it kind of goes back to when we did 'High Hopes' – no pressure, just fun.
"We were almost blown away by ourselves – we didn't know we could write songs like this. We would do things like 'let's put a break down the song like a laugh'.
"And then those things ended up staying in the songs. . . but it was almost like us trying different things; and being like that actually feels really good to us because it makes us laugh. It makes us happy.
"Maybe it took us all going through something, realising that you don't know what you have until it's gone kind of thing."
'Is This What I Look Like?' EP drops 15 July. Pre-order it.
