Talking to: Flyte
Flyte’s music feels like stepping into a space alive with quiet energy, reflection, and purpose. In August 2025, the indie folk duo (Nick Hill and Will Taylor) released Between You and Me, an album that captures both the spontaneity of life’s small moments and the weight of its larger reckonings. Its songs move effortlessly between intimacy and exuberance, offering listeners a glimpse into the personal landscapes of its creators.
Now, having played to a roaring and attentive crowd at London’s O2 Forum Kentish Town, their biggest show to date, the band’s music resonates in a new, expansive context. Between the introspective narratives of the album and the palpable energy of performing live to hundreds of fans, Nick opens up about the creative processes, personal discoveries, and collaborations that have shaped this record, revealing how honesty, experimentation, and a keen sense of timing continue to define their evolving sound.
‘Between You and Me’ feels like an intimate title, like it’s inviting us into a private conversation. What kind of dialogue were you hoping to create with listeners on this record?
We set ourselves the challenge of writing and recording the album over a really short period, just a couple of months. We hoped by not giving ourselves a moment to stop and overthink, we could trick ourselves into creating something spontaneous and truthful. We never really set out with a preconceived idea or “message”, it just fell out of us. These snapshots of our lives: the mundane, the huge stuff, the work. “Between you and me” is the title of a song we’d been using for another project and the simple double meaning just seemed to frame it all perfectly - it’s a private invitation, but it’s also pointing to some obstruction or barrier.
My favourite track on the album, ‘I’m So Down’, feels both playful and a little bittersweet. What was it like to craft a song that holds both of those layers, and does it carry a lot of personal meaning for you, or did you approach it more in the spirit of fun?
We find it satisfying to juxtapose happiness and sadness in songs. With ‘I’m So Down’ we’re always at pains to make sure people know that the phrase translates as “I’m up for it” - otherwise it just sounds like we’re really upset! It was a fun one to write, standing around in Will’s kitchen making endless cups of tea, putting these little vignettes of relationships and codependency together. It was even more fun to record, no overdubs, just a single live take to tape. It does carry personal meaning to both of us, sometimes you don’t realise these things till after the fact though. The second verse will often get me when we play it live.
Your songs have always carried a literary quality, and I know your band’s name itself is a nod to Evelyn Waugh. Did any writers, poets, or novels seep into this album?
On our first album we were telling stories through the lens of these literary characters. More recently, we haven’t really been listening to much other music or referencing as much. It removes a level of expectation or context we find instantly unhelpful. Reading is always useful though. I think I was reading East of Eden again when we were writing this record, I’m not sure there was much seepage though!
Your songwriting has been described as “confessional”. What does confession look like for you 11 years into your career? Has the process become easier, or more difficult, with time and experience?
It’s so much easier now as we can say the big things. It’s experience for sure, us just having been knocking around for longer, as well as having been writers longer. We know exactly what we want from a song and can tell instantly if something is off. It doesn’t mean we’re any less repressed or English, heavens no. But there’s a lot less agonising.
Hackney is filled with so many creative cross-currents. Do you think the city has influenced this new record?
Definitely, London is the album a lot. Not just in the way the songs feel to me, but because of the amazing cast of friends and talents we’re lucky enough to surround ourselves with in this city. There’s a lot of osmosis, some friendly competition and a really high standard.
There’s a little dose of LA in the record too - with Emily, Me and Alabaster- from a trip we’d taken together a few months before we wrote the rest.
What’s the most unexpected place you’ve heard a Flyte song playing in the wild?
I walked into an open mic night while someone was playing ‘Losing You’ recently. It was pretty surreal for me, but I think maybe more so for the poor chap who clocked me watching and started falling apart mid-song.
Touring often reshapes the meaning of songs, did any tracks from Between You and Me transform in unexpected ways once you began performing them live?
There’s a prophetic songwriting thing, which I naively thought only happened to us, but it’s definitely a thing. Often you’ll write a song you don’t really fully understand at the time and it’ll just come true, like it was telling you something or giving you warning. I can’t say I’ve had it yet with this record, but there was a moment at our album launch when we played “I just can’t believe that we’re friends”, for the first time since recording it. I sort of started weeping, which doesn’t happen often, especially when having to sing.
A lot of your music deals with relationships, both romantic and platonic, in a very nuanced way. Were there any new perspectives on connection, or disconnection, that came through while making this album?
There’s a funny point in songwriting where you find “the angle” that gives the whole piece a purpose. A song isn’t finished for us until we’ve found something that sets it apart. So in a way I think every song on the record includes some little discovery we’ve made. ‘Hurt people’ was an interesting challenge in writing a song entirely in one setting - a twelve step meeting below a church. Playing it live I imagine all these invisible connections between everyone in the room. ‘I’m Not There’ is maybe the closest we’ve gotten to describing an indescribable feeling.
As a band, collaboration has been important in your journey. Was there anyone unexpected, whether a musician, producer, or even a non-musical influence, that left a strong mark on Between You and Me?
We’d met Ethan Johns at a one-off session when we set out writing the record and we knew he was the person we knew we wanted to produce it. Ethan for us was this legendary name we would see on CDs we had growing up. So we knew his sound and from hearsay, his process. In a way we had that in mind the whole time. We wanted it to sound like a CD you’d find and stick on in your friend’s car. Ethan, as well as producing the record, drums beautifully throughout.
With Will’s family ties to English literature, do you find yourselves thinking of songs more as essays, short stories, or poems? Or is songwriting its own form entirely?
We’ve been talking about this a fair bit recently. Songwriting is its own thing. There’s definitely a bit of crossover, but ask a poet to write lyrics and they’ll often not work, not even a bit. The language of song lyrics is really specific and restrictive, as the words have to sing well. Some phrases and ideas end up getting used to death for that reason. But the main difference is that songs have the benefit of being set to music, a basic observation, but it’s huge. On the downside, music can provide a useful smokescreen - a bad song can be dressed up to sound pretty good. But hit the right tone, tell the right story with the right kind of simplicity and you can use music and lyrics to move people in a way that’s totally unique to songwriting.
Flyte has often been praised for honesty and clarity of voice. Do you ever feel pressure to maintain that rawness, or do you see yourselves experimenting with more abstract, less “confessional” approaches in the future?
I think whatever we write will be truthful in some way or another. If we’re not connecting to a song we don’t pursue it for long. It would be too jarring to perform something that meant nothing to either of us. No chance.
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Written by Melvin Boateng
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