Hailing from Killarney, Greywind are an Irish alternative rock duo known for their massive, emotionally charged sound and cinematic soundscapes. The band consists of siblings Steph O’Sullivan (vocals) and Paul O’Sullivan (guitar).
Having opened the Key Club Stage at Slam Dunk North, we caught up with Paul and Steph about music, mental health and Bert McCracken from The Used.
RAMzine: Lamestream Lydia here for RAMzine, we’re at Slam Dunk North with Greywind. You guys just opened the Key Club Stage. How does that feel?
Paul: It was a dream come true! I think it’s our favourite Greywind show, we’ve been touring the US for the last year, we got back to the UK, and we haven’t played a festival over here in a while. Everyone was singing along, and there were Irish flags in the air
Steph: Even walking out to a packed tent where people are singing along and wearing merch, it was crazy, I didn’t expect that. I knew there’d be some people there, but a full tent two days in a row was amazing.
Paul: Sometimes when you open a stage, you never know how many people will be in there.
RAMzine: We’re pretty curious, you guys are brother and sister. You find with this type of scene, one of you is always the one to start it. Who was it?
Paul: I think it was you. Or was it me? We’ve always loved the same things. I remember discovering Fall Out Boy, and you discovered MCR.
Steph: I know I always wanted to sing, but I didn’t know in what capacity. Then I discovered My Chemical Romance, and was like “I wanna be Gerard Way”
Paul: And then we found stuff like Thrice, Mineral, Saosin around the same time.
Steph: I remember you came home from school and said, “Listen to this band Fall Out Boy,” and that would make me want to listen to it.
Paul: Luckily, we’ve been able to play shows and festivals with Fall Out Boy since starting this band, so we’ve been able to live our dreams. There are so many inspiring bands we’ve been able to play with, like Thrice, we got to play a show with them
RAMzine: I feel like it would be hard to consume all that music and not recreate and rehash everything you listen to.
Paul: 100%. With our music, we’ve always wanted it to feel refreshing, like we take influence from post-rock with bands like Caspian and Explosions In The Sky, but then we have the theatrics of like an MCR, et cetera. Just creating something fresh. We’re from Ireland and there’s no emo scene really. We’re from the South of Ireland, 4 hours from Dublin, so we’re the only two emos, it probably sounds like alien music from where we’re from, so we’re very grateful to represent Ireland at such an iconic festival this weekend.
Steph: We’ve pulled inspiration from all our favourite bands, but also added our own things. We’re not just gonna be like “oh we’re just gonna do a direct ripoff of all those old emo bands”.
Paul: Sometimes you see bands on TikTok that are like “pop punk is in or emo is in now, I need to quickly write a song”. Luckily, our debut album came out in 2017, and it went viral in the last year and a half. We’ve always been, since day one, an emo band. We’re honoured to represent Ireland in the emo scene.
RAMzine: We’re onto a new age. Emo used to be like a bad word in music.
Steph: Yeah, I remember being picked on in school, and they’d be like “oh you emo” while I was wearing my My Chemical Romance hoodie
Paul: I was bullied for playing Fall Out Boy.
Steph: And now it’s cool to like them and all their merch, I’ve seen it in Primark. They have like Green Day T-shirts, and I’m like “I got bullied for that”.
Paul: We’d never let that stop us.
Steph: No, we embrace it.
Paul: This genre is like therapy for us, so we’re very grateful for what has helped us live our dreams and even helped us, mental health-wise.
RAMzine:
Mental health has always been intertwined with the genre in the first place. It’s just a really progressive way to think.
Steph: Even our first album, the first song we ever wrote, is about our uncle who committed suicide, and he struggled horrifically with his mental health, we obviously wrote that to try and have some therapy for ourselves. From such a bad thing happening, we’ve got to live our dreams, which is kind of messed up in a way. We’ve struggled ourselves with our mental health, we’ve been dropped by everyone, and we had to build ourselves back up. The music industry is a difficult place to be, and I still struggle with my mental health; anxiety, depression and everything, but I think it’s so important to talk about that. Even in our lyrics, songs like ‘Swing and Sway’. We’re very blunt about it in our new music (which no one’s heard yet), there’s a lot of very personal lyrics in there that a lot of people will be able to connect to.
Paul: I feel like some bands, they talk about mental health, but they kind of hold back in their songs. They think “how can I make this sound more mainstream?”, our lyrics are very blunt, we’ve been told about ‘Swing and Sway,’ we can’t play that on the radio because it’s too dark or “you shouldn’t release this song because it’s too dark lyrically” but we’re making them lead singles because they’re important songs to us. Then you see so many fans connect with these songs, so yeah, we’ve always just written for ourselves.
Steph: I think that’s what’s worked for us, people can tell we’re authentic and we’re not just trying to put on a front and be something we’re not
Paul: I think you can tell when a band is writing to go viral on TikTok. I think we’ve been very blunt with the way we’ve always written.
Steph: Very true to ourselves.
Paul: Yeah and now we’re playing Slam Dunk so it’s been great.
RAMzine: So you guys opened the festivals and hang around doing your interviews, what’s the plan for the rest of the day?
Paul: I wanna see The Used, I saw Bert McCracken earlier on. I don’t know what time they’re on but yeah, The Used, A Day to Remember.
Steph: I’m like “THE USED”, that is all I wanna see.
Paul: She even mentioned Bert McCracken on stage.
Steph: I mentioned him; he might have been watching.
RAMzine: We’re not gonna keep you for much longer, you’ve had your headline dates, so it’s probably too early to ask if you’re coming back soon.
Paul: We’re always working on so many things behind the scenes.
Steph: We’re always plotting. We’re plotting world domination, always.
Paul: Exactly, so we’ll see you around the world, hopefully later this year.In the time since this interview was conducted, Greywind announced their long-awaited second album, Severed Heart City, due for release September 19th 2025.
