Behind The Scenes: WSTR - Lonely Smiles (Video)

Liverpudlian pop-punk quartet, WSTR, are set to release their debut album 'Red, Green Or Inbetween', the on 20th January, 2017 via No Sleep Records. Vocalist Sammy Clifford says of where they found inspiration for song writing and their album title; "This album is mainly a breakup album however it's not a 'fuck you' album it's more a 'mad at myself' album. It’s all about kicking myself for not stepping up when I had the chance and coasting through life making bad decisions.” Completed by guitarists Danny Swift and Kieren Alder and bassist Alex Tobijanski, the quartet grew up on the 'original' mainstream pop punk bands, like Blink 182, New Found Glory and Sum 41, and they make no bones about being the product of their influences. The first track to be released from the record was Lonely Smiles, which Alder is pleased to give us a behind the scenes insight into…

We chose to release Lonely Smiles first because we felt it has everything a pop punk song calls for! Admittedly we were a little hesitant that the lyrical nature of the song would make it a bit of a weird choice and that’s part of why we went for a contrasting vibe with the video. We didn’t want it to come across too dark, so to lighten the mood and bring some positivity into the current climate, we asked our fans to submit a short video of themselves answering the question ‘What makes you smile?’. There we so many submissions, I think it was almost 100 from all over the world! It was fun looking through them all, so thank you if you sent one in!

The performance part of the video was shot at The Laundry Studios in Colwyn Bay. It was the middle of summer and I don’t think we could have chosen a warmer day to film. There were fans we could have used in the room but because we chose to put balloons up we couldn't use them or we’d have ended up with balloons flying all over the set. Jumping around doing the same thing for about two hours in that room was almost unbearable. Just to top if off, the last shot of the day we were going for a totally original group jump shot. We’re all totally useless so couldn’t get the timing right and when we finally did, I came down and rolled my ankle so hard. That was me done for the day, I genuinely thought I’d broken it.

We had LifeIsArtVisuals shoot and direct Lonely Smiles based on previous work we’d seen from them and it came out great as expected. I don’t think we changed a thing from the first cut we got back!