British India's Close-Knit Bond 'Honestly, We Don’t Really Have Any Other Friends'

British India's Declan Melia is talking while he walks the streets of Melbourne, returning to the studio in the early afternoon following a 3am session the previous night.

But although British India have a run of headline dates over the next few months and have just snagged the rather large support slot for Fall Out Boy's October tour, they're not rehearsing. Instead, the four-piece are putting ideas down – plotting their next move. Because if British India aren't creating, reasons Melia, then what are they doing?

“It's just the nature of the four guys in the band. It's more of a personality thing than anything to do with ambition,” he shrugs. “We can't really have idle hands, we're not the kind of guys to sit around playing PlayStation day-in, day-out or something. We try to treat this like a job, really just to justify it to ourselves and our parents and to make it feel like what we're doing is legitimate.”

With this concession, you almost forget that Controller – the band's third straight top ten record – took three years to land. Released in March, the album is British India's first since 2010's Avalanche, and although Melia admits the stretch was “enforced upon us by outside factors”, the storm of delays turned out to be the breathing space the band needed to refocus themselves on the future once more.

“The thing was, as is often the case with these outside factors, you don't realise how much they come from within,” he admits. “There was certainly lots of outside factors, but [we needed to] reconnect with how much British India meant to us.

"The thing that I keep saying is that we started to treat British India like our personal playground rather than an altar at which we should worship – something like that. And it wasn't until we regained our faith in what we wanted to do and regained our dedication to British India that we were able to get it together.

"We certainly [don't want to get complacent], and it was a hair's breadth away from all falling apart there for a second. There was a period where we weren't even sure if there was going to be another British India record – we were definitely in the dark for a while.”

But through all this they've kept their house of cards balanced and strong, reflective of any long-term friends that have shared the parties and pitfalls that life can throw forwards.

“Our closeness is really the core of British India and why we've been here for six years,” says Melia. “But we're just lucky like that; we're friends firstly and then the band secondly.

"Honestly, we don't really have any other friends, it's just those three guys and I don't spend much time with any other males per se. It's an interesting dynamic and there's no crash course for it but it seems to work pretty well.”

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