Validating: The Q Tip Bandits speak on performing at Boston Calling Music Festival

The Q Tip Bandits will perform at the  Boston Calling Music  Festival this year, a chance the group  felt was "validating". 

In an interview with WBUR News, spoke about their excitement to be part of the lineup of the Boston Calling Music Festival, which gives a chance to many small scale bands to perform with other major music groups. 

This year, Foo Fighters, The Lumineers, and Paramore will be present there and along side, The  Q Tip Bandits.

As per the publication, The Q Tip Bandits  describe their music style to be peppy and fun and that it has an easy-to-listen flow.

It can be said that the group is a mirror to youth-like aura with their music centered around indie-pop, rock, funk, and soul.

The music also tends to have cursing. Leo Son, the singer, also agrees to that and said, "I curse like a sailor it's really a problem."

The band is now set to overtake the stage on Saturday May 27 at none other than Boston’s headlining music festival. 

The band comprises of  a group of different instrument players. 

  Claire Davis is in vocals and plays bass, Dakota Maykrantz plays drums and a uniquely stellar horn section, Maclin Tucker is on the trumpet and Hoyt Parquet is the trombone person.

For Son, music helped him to connect and heal. He hopes his music can be the same for others.

"Music was like my way of connecting with something when I didn't connect with the people around me," he said. "It was my way of having artists that sang songs that made me feel not alone when I felt alone in the rest of my life."

In 2017, the band had  formed during university studies in Berklee College of Music.    

From playing in their college days to now being part of the lineup of the Boston Calling Festival, the opportunity was one that came through a focused aim of sorts.

"Leo [Son], he told me very early on, ‘In five years, we're going to be on that lineup.’ And I was like, ‘Oh yeah, totally...,’" Davis remarked.

 "And little did we know, five years later... I guess Leo knew."

"We have been growing steadily each year and playing shows to five people, then 15 people, then 2,500," she said. 

"And so, to be at this point now, five years later … we didn't just — poof — magically get here. We've worked to be here, and that feels extremely validating, to put it simply, to have that hard work be acknowledged."

Acknowledging the support and love they have received, the group keeps itself in check by interacting with fans regularly. "Even if it's as simple as getting back to a comment on social media," Son said. 

"It's something that takes less than a minute, but it's effort and it really is about just building this family."

They now witness the fruits of their labour as they have the chance to perform outside of their hometown. "We go to New York now — the last time we played there [it] was like, ‘This feels like a Boston show,’" said Son.

This comes after the group concluded the Tip Toe tour in March where Bandits traveled across the country and played an exclusive showcase at SXSW with a sell out performance in Charlotte, North Carolina.