Clean livers to a fault, Tim Hughes hears that while Amber Run are big foodies, they also make regular trips to the gym, aren’t big party animals and don’t pig out on junk food

There was a time when being in a band was all about sex, drugs and rock and roll.

For indie-pop buzz band Amber Run, however, there is something even more important – baking.

“I just love to get baking,” says bassist Tom Sperring, 21, who tells me about his talents for millionaire’s shortbread and brownies.

“We are all big into food. We make packed lunches and we save what we’ve cooked for dinner for our lunch the next day. It’s usual for us to take stuff in Tupperware on tour.

“The easiest thing is to pop to the local kebab shop or eat in service stations but it’s not that good for us.

It’s easy to be unhealthy and to sit down and not do much. So when we were recording the album I got into the habit of going to the gym first thing in the morning. It’s good to get active.”

Clean living to a fault, Amber Run are clearly not the type of band to blow their earnings on bowls of Colombian powder, trash hotel rooms or drive cars into swimming pools.

“We are more of a ‘tea and biscuits at the hotel’ kind of band,” he confesses. “We are not the biggest party animals.”

Tom, singer Joe Keogh and guitarist Will Jones were old friends from Buckinghamshire, and played in an alt-rock band together before heading to Nottingham University, where they met drummer Felix Archer and keyboardist Henry Wyeth. They quit the courses after two years to concentrate on the band. The gamble paid off.

They called themselves Amber, but added the suffix to avoid confusion with the, admittedly very different, German-based Eurodance artist of the same name.

“This outfit has really taken off,” says Tom, who is taking some time out at his parents’ house near Chesham. As well as knocking up a tray of baked goods, he is preparing for the band’s debut headline tour which starts tomorrow, and arrives in Oxford on Sunday.

“It is only just starting to dawn on us, but we are taking it one step at a time and are really enjoying it.”

The tour precedes the release of new single Spark on April 20, a support tour for Kodaline and a series of festival slots including the Isle of Wight. And, with a bag of harmony-rich folk-infused anthemic pop tunes already under their belts, and an album due out later in the year, it’s easy to imagine this down to earth bunch making it as the next Mumford & Sons. Their singles Noah and Heaven have already earned them the patronage Radio 1’s Zane Lowe and Fearne Cotton.

Their big break came when they were selected by BBC Introducing to play their stage at Reading and Leeds Festivals.

For Tom it was a landmark moment.

“We started off big and bold by playing Reading,” he says. “It was incredible.”

“I went to Reading from the ages of 15 to 18 and loved it. It’s punchy, rowdy and everyone is up for a good time and gets involved come rain or shine. So when I got the message from BBC Introducing saying we had been put forward for Reading and Leeds I was looking for someone to go nuts with.

“If you’ve ever been in a band and have played Reading, you’ve done all right.”

They followed that up by headlining a BBC Introducing/Club NME night at Koko in London.

“If someone had told me six months ago that I would be playing Koko I wouldn’t have believed them,” says Tom. “The same goes for playing Brixton Academy with Kodaline. “It’s nuts. Afterwards it will be like: ‘did that really happen?’. It hasn’t really caught up with us yet.”

Asked to describe the band’s sound, he name checks Coldplay and Sigur Ros. “We like the size of it and the soundscapes mixed with a pop sensibility,” he says. “But it is folky too, because of the acoustic guitar, melody and harmony. We are voicing emotion through music and making it acceptable.

“It is all about what you experience. We are a group of best friends and are having the best time if our lives and that comes through in the music. “Joe always says we are horrible perfectionists, but we take pride in what we do and have put a lot of practice into playing live. Now we want to play as many shows and festivals as we can as. There’s no point aiming small. We want to go big.”

So can we expect to see some of Tom’s baking beside the T-shirts and CDs on the merchandise stall? “I don’t know if we are allowed to, but it would be nice,” he laughs. “It doesn’t get much better than home baked shortbread.”

CHECK IT OUT
Amber Run play The Cellar, Oxford on Sunday. Doors 6pm.
Tickets £6.75 from seetickets.com