GRASSROOTS DISCOVERY #6 - THE SICK FIX |

INTERVIEW | THE SICK FIX | GRASSROOTS DISCOVERY

With so much indie music over-produced to an inch of its life, The Sick Fix bring to that musical world reality and an edginess that is severely lacking with feet firmly placed in garage, punk, indie and post-punk camps.

Formed in 2024, The Sick Fix, a still-teenage foursome,signed a deal with LAMA Management at the start of 2026, with their first AA single, “Shoe Shopping/Liquid Gold”, on Lemon Sun Records garnering support from BBC Radio 6 DJ Chris Hawkins who suggested that The Sick Fix could be the “next big thing to come from Manchester.”

Pulling in the very best of their influences (The Fall, The Cribs, Buzzcocks, The Small Faces, Supergrass and The Libertines amongst others) yet creating their own sound, The Sick Fix are a force of nature.

Live, the band are loud, enthusiastic, exciting and energetic. And somehow, that live feel gets translated to a sublime sound when recorded, teetering on the edge of controlled and organised chaos that is near-impossible to categorise.

The band – Leo Mitchell on guitars and vocals, Ted Wright on drums, Oli Jaques on bass, and Alfie Radford on guitar- plan a new single in February 2027, and an EP and mini-tour in the summer once college has finished.

The Sick Fix state that they are the best f**king band you haven’t seen yet.

And who are we to argue?

You describe the band as having come together through “natural selection” rather than being assembled. What was it about the chemistry between you that made you realise this could become something special?

ALFIE: It was really becoming mates before becoming ‘the band’. You’re gonna be spending loads of time together so you need to get on and have same characters and all that first. Leo and Ted were the original two and went through a few people before me and Oli joined, surprisingly enough both separatelyvia Facebook, and it’s now complete.

In just a couple of years, you’ve gone from forming a band to attracting management interest from LAMA Management in both the UK and the USA. How has that journey felt from your perspective?

OLI: Pretty cool, I suppose. It came out of the blue to be honest. A bloke walked Roger contacted us and said he loved our demos on Spotify. We chatted to him on Zoom cos he’s in LA and we got on with him, so it made the choice easier. Roger co-manages us with Baggy, our other manager. He’s Ted’s grandad but like the band’s Dad and we drive him mad…but we love him. We think he loves us. Hope so anyway.

What does signing with LAMA Management mean for The Sick Fix, and what opportunities has the partnership opened up for you so far?

TED: It helps to have someone in the business to watch out for pitfalls but there’s so much politics behind the scenes in music, it’s a bit crap really. It’s like running with your laces tied together. All ‘you do this for me and I’ll do this for you’. Lots of false promises, algorithms and ‘numbers’ that we need to watch out for.

But doors to festivals have opened easier with LAMA backing otherwise it is the lottery of form applications. And it seems more people in the industry have heard of The Sick Fix now, so I suppose the backing has helped with that.

LEO: We’re under no illusions at all that it takes hard work to get anywhere in music, and you have to take as many chances as you can and use as much as you can to get anywhere. And that’s what we are doing, step by step and carefully. Overnight success is a myth.

Reviewers have compared elements of your sound to everyone from The Small Faces and The Jam to The Libertines and The Hives. Which artists have had the biggest influence on your songwriting and live performances?

OLI: We’ve all got different tastes, and it’s always changing, but I suppose it’s started with The Libertines and Buzzcocks, and has now added in The Cribs, Supergrass, The Fall, The Specials… But it’s not copying, it’s influencing.

ALFIE: Leo writes the songs and it’s his original ideas, but all of us dip in with comments and suggestions.

Your music blends garage punk energy with influences from different eras. How conscious are you of those influences when writing, and how do you ensure The Sick Fix still sound like The Sick Fix?

LEO: Like we said, they are influences and not copies. If you copy, you lose your soul. The Sick Fix sound is always there, and always evolving, and that’s something we will never lose. It’s part of us and in our DNA.

TED: Writing comes naturally to Leo but he’s not conscious of the influences; but he is aware of the band sound and the whole band ethos. That sounds a bit pretentious but it’s the only way to say it.

LEO: It’s taken 3 to 4 years to get this sound, so why chuck it away on a whim?

You’ve built a reputation for energetic and exhilarating live shows. What do you want people to experience when they see a Sick Fix gig for the first time?

LEO: We just want them to see a hard-working young working-class band that are prepared to take the music world on by playing real proper music that entertains and excites rather thanall that pop pap that gets played over tinny speakers in Maccies. And we want them to enjoy themselves and get involved in the feelings that we want them to feel. It’s all about the music sensation: the sound along with the feelings the lyrics evoke.

Your recordings capture a lot of energy, but many fans say the live experience is on another level. How do you approach recording while trying to preserve that raw live intensity?

OLI: We’ve actually been quite lucky in finding a producer who gets the band. George [Brown] has a studio at South City Studios in Stockport where we rehearse, and he has been involved with us right from the start, and we gelled straightaway. He was in a band a while ago, but we all connected with him. Sometimes we lay down a guide track and then do each instrument separately but normally we lay down the backing straight away so essentially it is live. We then do a few overdubs, then do the vocals. That way it keeps that live intensity.

ALFIE: Ted (drummer) and Oli (bass) are just so precise and, well, brilliant at what they do that the first recording is often what we use.

TED: That’s why it sounds live because it is!

As a relatively young band making waves in the industry, do you feel part of a new generation of guitar bands, and where do you think guitar music is heading right now?

LEO: There are a lot of good bands out there who play guitars but I don’t like to say ‘guitar bands’. That’s too narrow a phrase because it should be how the music makes you feel. Any music can do that. There is a lot what I would call indie bands but there needs to be a bit more to it. It can be a bit bland at times but the music needs to have more bollocks to it. It needs to have somesort of danger to it. Someone said that our sound is ‘feral, restless, wired, unpredictable and constantly on edge’ and that’s what music should be. Not safe and wimpy and bland. Just teetering on falling apart but kept together by the band. That’s what guitar music should be like.

OLI: There are a few problems with live music at the moment.

Firstly there’s a lack of venues that allow under 18s in. Where are the future fans gonna come from? Kids these days don’t even know about gigs in small venues. They’re all about pink cowboy hats, feather boas, sequined tops and bottoms and all that shite in big soulless arenas rather than seeing real bands playing real music in real venues. Get them in. Let them in.

And then there’s the problem that promoters face with ticket sales because people won’t buy in advance. Don’t know why. Is it the fact that people can’t afford it? They’d rather spend £50/£60 going to one arena gig rather than £10 going to a grassroots one. Music Venue Trust are doing their best but there needs to be some serious change from the gig goers AND also the venues with age limits.

There’s already a lot of excitement around The Sick Fix. What are your ambitions for the next few years, and where do you see this elevator ride taking you?

LEO: Softly softly catchee monkey, Baggy says. There’s no overnight success so let’s build slowly. Get a reputation for great music and live shows, get better support slots and build an audience…and get people back to the real music world.

We’ve got some short-term goals. Like Alfie wants to play Brixton Academy, I wanna play the O2 Ritz…but it all comes down to what you see as success. Getting kids to be what they want to be rather than what others tell them they should be would be a good start. All of us in the band are different but at the same time, the same. No one tells us what to wear and we are not part of a genre or a fad. Be yourself. Set your goals. Be realistic.

Many people are calling you “the best band they haven’t heard yet”. What’s the one thing you’d like people to know about The Sick Fix before they press play for the first time?

LEO: We’re real. We play good old working-class rock’n’rollthat means something. Yeah. It’s different meanings and feelings to different people, but it means something. We want people to enjoy seeing 4 teenagers enjoy themselves on stage, and we want them to know that we mean what we do. It’s not for money and not for fame (although I suppose a little bit of both would be nice). It’s because we can that we do it.

TED: Expect the unexpected, people. Open your eyes and ears. And let’s go!