Photo Credit: Nat Lacuna

Bridging post-hardcore sensibilities and emo aesthetics, GILT have made a name for themselves since 2017. Navigating topics of gender dysphoria, body dysmorphia, and mental health in their music, the band is now four EPs, one album, and multiple national tours into their career. With the previous release “In Windows, Through Mirrors” in 2021 being the introduction to the band’s new direction, the band walks into 2022 with a confident sense of their musical stylings. GILT has experienced a lot in its lifetime, but since November of 2021 a new life has been breathed into the band and they expect to keep the ball rolling in 2022.

GILT’s ‘Conceit’ as a whole explores the topic of grief in its entirety. Each song features a guest vocalist from bands like The Callous Daoboys, UNITYTX, The Holy Ghost Tabernacle Choir, Doll Skin, and Kind Eyes. This new EP was recorded & mixed by Lee Dyess at Earthsound Studios and mastered by Matt Goings, with production consultation from Hansel Romero (Nightlife).

For Tour Dates & Ticket Information, Follow GILT HERE

Stream GILT’s Single “Amethyst” (ft Shaolin G of UnityTX) HERE

What’s your story as an artist? 

– It was kind of almost determined for me that I would be into art in one way or another. My parents are both musically gifted people with my mom having a beautiful singing voice and being a DJ to my dad being a rapper, producer, emcee, DJ, and being amazing at 

scratching. It would be weird if I went into anything other than music, because I was surrounded by it since birth and I wouldn’t change that for anything. It was hard trying to find exactly what it was about music that I enjoyed personally. There’s a lot of different outlets and skills to learn for music so I tried finding what fit me best. I started with musical theater and then moved to guitar and didn’t really enjoy it, but I was on drums for a while and what seemed to stuck most was being a vocalist. Through all the options I realized that it’s all rooted in my want to entertain people, to try to convey my thoughts and emotions to people to make them feel something. I wanted to fit in so bad and wanted to make music my everything and I kept trying different things to see what it was I could do but the thing about it all was that I just wanted to be an entertainer at the end of the day, and i’ve found ways to not only make it work with music but also in other aspects of my life. – Ash 

What inspired this last release? 

Gilt has gone through a lot of different moments in life and the one that seems to be the overarching theme is grief and loss. As a collective we’ve all experienced loss in one way or another, and I’ve personally experienced the passing of my father. I was 19 when he had passed and it completely changed my world view. It’s been almost three years since then and I’ve learned a lot of different aspects of grief I didn’t know about and there’s a certain expectation you have of what grieving looks like. What hurt a lot was that a lot of people will try to cheer you up by saying it gets better without mentioning that you might go backwards a lot and sometimes be back to square one. With this record we wanted to touch on more of the raw emotion of dealing with loss but in an unapologetic way of saying that there’s a lot of unhappy feeling with loss and that it’s okay to explore them and let yourself feel them. – Ash 

Do you get inspired by other art forms? 

Oh yeah, I pull from so many different art forms when it comes to being a musician. There’s a lot of different aspects to being a front person in a band that range from your persona all the way to your aesthetic and I put a lot into what that looks like for me. Im very into fashion but that stems from being very into dolls, specifically fashion dolls like Bratz, Monster High, Integrity Toys, etc. I pull a lot of the aesthetic and attitude from these dolls and try to really nail how I want to present my music to others. I think collecting and creating dolls is such a beautiful art form to me because it’s like a drawing you can interact with. I’m not particularly great at creating a doll or customizing but I am starting to dip my feet into that water, and it bleeds over into how I want to customize myself. – Ash 

Any funny anecdotes from the time you were recording or writing this?

So the “evangelical but not devout” line in Small Hollow Bones was based on a conversation I overheard while I was loading gear at our local dive bar for another band I play in. Our bassist, an agnostic, was having a beer by the side of the road with my father, a pastor, and they were chatting about if Satanists could be considered evangelical. The absurd circumsimage of that conversation still gets me. So much of this album is really serious and heady, but it’s all based on really human conversational moments like these with people we’re close to. – Tyler 

What’s your favorite place or environment to write? 

I actually used to get a lot of writing done at work in the hour before customers came in. I’d be by myself, natural light only, just mindlessly loading the same ingredient containers I loaded every day and the rote labor freed my mind up to wander. I’d write whatever came out on receipt paper and when it came time to put the album together it was a lot like arranging a puzzle, seeing what stray thoughts fit together from these (literal) scraps. – Tyler 

What’s a record that shaped your creativity? 

Manchester Orchestra’s “I’m Like A Virgin Losing A Child” was a really big record for me. They were the first band I watched grow from the start, and that first record was just so emotionally turbulent, it felt nothing like the Warped Tour pop punk I had been listening to. No GILT release has had one specific predictable mood or tempo and it’s because I grew up idolizing albums that were emotional journeys, not necessarily just a collection of interchangeable singles. “Sleeper 1972” was specifically my sit in my room with the lights off and cry song. I’ve pretty much been chasing that cathartic feeling ever since, as a fan and as a creator. – Tyler 

Who is an artist or band you look up to today? 

I think there’s two bands that come to mind that I really admire in the way they’ve perfected their crafts. Spiritbox has been a recent band that I cannot stop talking about, and Courtney is an absolute powerhouse of a vocalist that I aspire to be. The other band is definitely Deftones because every song of theirs is a hit and they’ve mastered their genre so well and have made an impact on the entire landscape of music that will always continue to blow my mind. – Ash

GILT Spring 2022 US Tour Dates 

May 2nd – Gainesville, FL – High Dive

May 3rd – Miami, FL – Gramps

May 4th – Tampa, FL – Crowbar

May 5th – Atlanta, GA – Atlanta Underground

May 6th – Nashville, TN – Drkmttr

May 7th – Indianapolis, IN- TBD

May 8th – Chicago, IL – Burlington Bar

May 11th – Pittsburgh, PA – Mr. Roboto

May 12th – Brooklyn, NY – Sovereign

May 13th – Hartford, CT – TBD

May 14th – Providence, RI – Alchemy

May 15th – Massapequa, NY – Massapequa VFW Hall

May 18th – Marlton, NJ – Marlton Training Center

May 19th – Philadelphia, PA – Luigi’s Mansion

May 20th – Baltimore, MD – TBD

May 21st – Washington, D.C. – TBD