On the Rise
People I've Met

After meeting at school in Los Angeles, the trio made up of guitarist and vocalist Moses Martin, drummer Orlando Wiltshire, and bassist Andrew Suster, followed the well-worn path of starting a band. So what if one of them happens to be the son of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin? Up in their record labels offices in London, the trio now in their 20s bound into a nondescript conference room with the youthful exuberance you’d expect from a band finally seeing the fruits of their labour come to life. 

Suster is the first to dive into his path to People I’ve Met. At five he began playing piano, and did so until tenth grade. “I would have a piano lesson and be really frustrated with not being able to read the music because I didn't like doing my homework," he smiles innocently. "But after, I would just sit noodling for hours. My mom couldn't take me away from it.”

Eventually, he took up bass after a teacher recommended it to him as an alternative. This is also when Wiltshire came into his life. 

Wiltshire's parents are both musicians, and his entry to music began more worldly than most, with the djembe, a West African instrument. Switching up to more conventional drums, it was around this time he met Suster during a cross country practice. "I was next to him running, and he was like making bird noises? I said, What are you doing bro?" Wiltshire recalls laughing. 

After this meeting the pair became inseparable, and started playing music together. Their extracurricular musical career began with Suster needing to learn drums for another school band, and since Wiltshire had a kit, it just made sense. "We'd have little play dates playing music together," he laughs. “And then eventually we tried to make some sort of math rock, grunge song, and no one can hear it ever!”

Martin joined the group in 2021, after a class project saw them completing a Minecraft build, giving them an online connection. "When Moses came into the picture in 10th grade we all really locked in and became this family unit,” Suster says. “We had our silly moments and our arguments and totally became triplets.” His story is a bit different.

“Well, music runs in the family,” he says dryly. 

Due to Martin’s parents, his is an unusually scrutinised entry into to music but that does little to tarnish his devotion to the craft. “Generally, music was always being played in the house, especially by my mom. Actually, she has really great taste, and a beautiful voice as well. She would always sing around the house, a lot more than the other fella.”

He started on drums at four, then guitar at five, which is when he wrote his first song. Called "It's Not An Umbrella", the young Martin wrote it after some garden renovation was going on. “They were taking out an umbrella from the backyard or something, and for some reason that made me really sad that we were losing a piece of our home in a way, even though it was just being replaced with something else."

Songwriting properly would take a back seat until he was 15, meeting his future bandmates when the obsession of being in a group took hold, “that's all I wanted to do, and all I thought about, and it continues to be that way," he remembers. "I think it really developed with consistency and figuring out new ways to get inspired and evolve in a really natural kind of way.”

The childlike urge to rebel against anything your parents are involved in did briefly take hold at 12: “I'd always thought I wanted to be a musician, but then every kid at some point has to reject their parents in some way, and I did that for a second. I was like, 'I'm going to be into fashion' or whatever it was. But then I realised I love this too much to deny it.”

With the trio starting to mess around musically, their first band practice opened the flood gates. The sounds they began putting together as a group were actually surprising to the trio. “It was very – I don't know if derivative is the right term – but influenced...I think being in a band is similar to being a teenager in a way, especially the early stages. We were teenagers trying on a bunch of different band personalities and figuring out what we like, what we didn't like. At the beginning, I was dying to sound like The 1975," Martin admits. 

Their early days as Dancer found them endlessly writing and recording in Wiltshire's home. After this period of playing about, in 2024 the three eventually parted ways and went to college – where they're still enrolled today. "The three of us got the ultimately great opportunity to not be together for a minute and figure out how to make music on our own, and then that meant when we came back together, it was just all that much more unique to our styles," Martin says. 

“Pre-college we wrote some amazing songs that will eventually come out for sure, but when we had our own time to figure out who we were as people," Suster says. Heading to the East Coast, Martin went to Rhode Island, while Suster and Wiltshire to New York (but separate schools). When they first came back together, Martin showed them one of the tracks he'd been working on, which would become their debut single, 2025's "Promise": "I was like, God, this is different," Suster remembers. 

This new era also beckoned a new name for the group. Announcing on Instagram in 2025 they were changing their name, People I've Met was born. Between this and gearing up for their debut EP release, what was once three friends seeing where things would go, suddenly found its footing. “I feel like our identity metamorphosised a bit," Suster says.

Martin adds: “There was definitely a change in intention. I'd say once we were in college,  the moments that we do get together to record are much more valuable now, and more of a rarity that we're all in the same place at the same time, and so everything just became more intentional and focused.” 

Releasing their debut EP, Bunny, in May 2026, People I've Met set their tentative steps into the world with a collection of tracks that embody their deepest influences. Citing the likes of Beach House, The Strokes, and their beloved Radiohead, they also have individual loves they bring to each other. Wiltshire is intrigued by more electronic music such as Oklou, Martin fell for John Prine, while Suster found himself in a Bob Dylan rabbit hole around the release of A Complete Unknown.        

They have a lightweight feel to their music, Martin's vocals often near an impressive falsetto which hovers above the body of syncopating electronics, studious rhythms, and sweeping guitar lines.  

Being such music-hungry creatures, and still deep in their youth, what People I've Met sounds like is bound to change. Martin even cites The Replacements as a current obsession. To such a point that he recently purchased the same vintage drum machine the 'Mats used on "Within Your Reach". 

There's something inherently earnest about the trio's endeavour. Sure, there's that unavoidable fact that's going to loom around them, but famous parents can't fake the reality of three lads wanting to make it as a band from the ground up. They've been diligently touring around their native New York, and had a support slot in 2025 with Royel Otis. Such is the way, Martin is indeed in love with band life. 

“It's fantastic, and also something to be reckoned with in a sense. It's not all sunshine and rainbows,” he smiles. 

“There's nothing more humbling than lugging three guitar cases on the J-Train in the rain to go to Brooklyn," Suster adds. "There's moments where it feels very difficult and the weight of the world is on your shoulders, but then you get on stage or you get to write music with the guys,” Suster says nodding to his bandmates sitting next to him. 

Wiltshire adds his take: “I think all the parts of a band that are in person or physical, in the real world, that's the part that really fulfills me; the lugging around shit; playing music live; making music. Even the bad parts are all just a part of being a band. I love it all. It feels like I'm in a movie sometimes." 

For as long as it takes, People I've Met are happy to be a part of something. How big or small it is doesn't currently matter to them. “I think no matter what speed it would be moving at, we always want to do it forever,” Martin says. 

“Sometimes there are moments where it's like, Holy shit, what's going on? Oh my god. Where I thought I was still in high school," Wiltshire laughs. The unmistakable youthful energy of a band ready to hit the road hard radiates from them. But they're also keenly aware of what they need to hold on to: "The innocence, we need to try to preserve that."