The perpetual motion of The Itch

“We started playing music at, like, 14.” Speaking from Newcastle, bundled up in the corner of a Wetherspoons, Georgia Hardy and Simon Tyrie, aka The Itch, reminisce in the same way you might talk about what you did before. Sharing one set of earbuds, the two did not start so close together. “We played live, but we weren’t in the same band,” Hardy mentions. 

“We went to different high schools… we’d often be on the same bills. We were kind of like rival high school bands.” It was only in sixth form that the two began making music together, but that sense of slow orbit through the same spaces carries into how they talk about their hometown, Luton. “We were going to see any band that played that came to Luton, whether we liked the music or not,” Hardy shrugs. “We wanted to see live music.”

Luton, as they describe it, wasn’t built for music in any structured way, but it created the right conditions for it. Showing up to a place regardless of genre is something many provincial folk can understand, instead being driven by curiosity and the desire for the experience of large speakers and small stages. “It was less of a scene and more just classic ‘being outside of a major city’,” says Tyrie. “We were quite infatuated by the scenes that were happening in cities. It was just really exciting to be, like, going up to a kind of proper music club.”

Within that, certain spaces took on an outsized importance. They talk with excitement and nostalgia about MySpace bands, local indie nights, and a club called Edge that became an informal hub. “The guy who ran it taught us to DJ and kind of introduced us to the idea of guitar music as party music,” Hardy explains. This push and pull between wanting more and enjoying what you had - between what was available and what you had to build yourself - now sits at the centre of The Itch’s identity. Not just in making songs, but making something that lives in a room and invites people in.

It would be easy to describe their music as grimy, the modern Depeche Mode, evoking the imagery of sticky floors, sweat-soaked rooms, and dimly lit stages, but that feels reductive. There is a clarity to what they do that cuts through any suggestion of mess for the sake of it. It is a curated type of sleazy, synthy dance-punk that’s been shaped by years of playing, watching, and understanding how music actually lands in a space. From the infectious “Space in the Cab” to “No More Sprechgesang” from their upcoming debut,” The Itch bring a carefree attitude to their songwriting that feels anything but careless: it is instinctive.

Long before music releases or industry attention, before even a proper run of shows, the duo already had the material that would become their debut. “We actually had the album written before we started playing shows,” Hardy shares. Rather than rushing it out however, they let those songs live in front of audiences first. The live circuit became less about proving themselves and more about refining what they already had, getting people excited to follow the mysterious band with no music out and nothing on social media either (which admittedly included myself after seeing them open THE SOCIAL RESIDENCY #8 in the summer of 2023). “We approach live sets quite differently [to recording],” Hardy explains. “We just play the songs how they feel good to play live, not trying to recreate sounds.”

That distinction, between the studio recordings and the live experience, especially matters for The Itch. Live music is not an extension of what they do, it’s the centre of it. “There’s nothing I love more than [playing] live really,” Hardy admits. It comes through in the way they talk about their growth too. It has been steady, based more on rooms being filled rather than metrics and followers accumulated, but there’s something special about a group of people singing along to songs that haven’t been released. Yet that’s something the outfit regularly experience, they tell me with awe. “In a time where it's kind of the opposite, where a refrain gets massive on social media and then people come to show and sing just that, we’ve kind of done it in reverse,” laughs Hardy. “It’s been a slower game, but a fulfilling one for us personally.”

“I have no interest in doing that whole TikTok thing,” she continues, on the subject of their unique approach to growth. “I want to be big with people in real life.” Follow @theitch_music on Instagram and you’re sure to see a Story telling you to send some cryptic words to an unknown mobile number. Give it some time and you’ll receive a succinct reply linking to an unreleased song or a ticket drop for a show. This DIY texting system, which I must stress is still done by hand, highlights this band’s guiding star for connecting music and people. When asked how this came about? “I was just like ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be fun if we just text people?” Hardy shrugs.

Underpinning all of this is the restlessness that defines their songwriting. Tyrie describes it as an inability to settle into one sound for too long. “I’m very guilty of wanting to do this kind of thing and then this kind of thing,” he laughs. “I think you can probably get the flavor of ‘we don't really love to stick in our lane’.” That instinct keeps the band moving, drawing from a wide pool of influences that stretch beyond expectations. The result is a debut that keeps you on your toes without losing cohesion, tied together by feeling and by the sense that each track is built to evoke something in you. Namely, to make you want to go out and dance.

There is a self-awareness beneath all of this momentum though, a recognition of what is changing around them. Their music circles nightlife not just as something that’s impassioned them, but also as something fragile. “It’s more of an existential problem with spaces,” Tyrie says, pointing to the steady loss of grassroot venues and the struggles for new artists. “There are so many barriers now because of the choke hold that big companies have over entertainment and night life. … For us, it was a major part of growing up. Of our youth. And I wouldn't want the next generation to not be able to experience it.”

That sense of shared experience is ultimately what The Itch continue to chase; the moment where a room locks in, where a song lands perfectly, where the line between band and crowd disappears. It is not something that can be replicated digitally or manufactured through strategy. It has to happen in real time, in real spaces.

Looking ahead, there’s no sense of slowing down here. The debut album is approaching, but already their attention is shifting forwards. “Album two,” Tyrie says, almost immediately when asked what next, half-joking but entirely sincere. This is a band that knows what it wants to do and what it values, and is intent on holding onto those things. In a landscape that often prioritises speed and visibility, The Itch offer something more grounded. A reminder that music, at its best, is not just something you hear, but something you step into. And once you are there, you stay for as long as you can. Or at least until the lights come up.