Adam Pitts, Andy Brown, Joel Peat and Ryan Fletcher make up Lawson. The boyband supported The Wanted on a nationwide tour in spring 2011 and, shortly after, signed a record deal with Polydor.
The band formed in 2009 after Andy posted clips of himself singing acoustic covers on YouTube. He explained: “Adam had been watching them, he was quite the fan. He messaged me one day saying if I ever needed a drummer to give him a call, so I did.”
He continued: “I knew Joel from just meeting at gigs in London and he was best mates with Ryan from music college and so the band was born.”
The four boys wanted a meaningful name for the newly-formed group. Adam said: “I had a brain tumour a few years back and had to have a really big operation. The surgeon who performed the op was called Dr David Lawson and so that’s where the name came from.”
The band’s inspirations are musicians and bands that write their own music and perform to a huge demographic of the audience, such as John Mayer, Kings of Leon, Coldplay, The Script and Ed Sheeran. “That’s who we sit alongside musically,” Ryan added.
However, Andy isn’t worried about the competition in the music charts, which is already dominated by boybands such as JLS, The Wanted and One Direction: “We get it when people say we’re a boyband because we do look like that at first but I think, when they see us live, they’ll soon see that any similarities between us and One Direction stop at haircuts.”
Lawson’s top tip for getting into the music industry is “perseverance. If at first you don’t succeed, dust yourself and try again.”
Andy continued: “We’ve been together for three years and have played the crappiest clubs, been offered some way dodgy deals and, at times, not had a pound between us. Everything takes time and if you work hard and keep your head up, it’ll be worth it.”
In 2012, Lawson will be releasing their first album. Joel added: “We’re also looking forward to getting out and playing live as much as possible, so get down to a gig if you can. We always throw free stuff out into the audience so if that’s not an incentive then I don’t know what is.”