Four conventionally attractive young men who know how to sensually clutch a microphone stand and convince a teenage girl in the audience that they could be singing about her is the hallmark of any good boy band. And on this front, Midnight Til Morning more than delivers.

With their charming pop-rock ballads and perfectly dishevelled luscious mops of hair, they have mastered the ability of indiscriminately winning hearts and singing to the Everywoman.

Midnight Til Morning – composed of Shane Appell, Zach Newbould, Conor Smith, and Mason Watts – first formed on the Netflix competition series Building The Band. The show was hosted by AJ McLean of the Backstreet Boys, and judged by a star-studded collection of former boy band/girl band members: Kelly Rowland, Nicole Scherzinger, and the late Liam Payne. 

“I was bored,” Smith admits when asked what drew him to Building The Band. “I was working a retail job and I was like, ‘What the hell am I doing?’ I was bored shitless.”

“When I was first told about it, I personally didn’t want to do it,” Newbould confesses. He had participated in TV shows with similar formats before, and felt they hadn’t quite given him the leg up he needed. But the more he found out about the concept of Building The Band, the more he was intrigued.

Watts was already a working solo musician, but he felt socially unfulfilled. “I would just find myself in these cities on the other side of the world and just be super lonely,” he says.

“Playing these shows to hundreds of people, it’s this huge high, and then next minute you’re sitting in a room on your own in a city where you don’t know anybody.” He wanted to form a team, to have a community around him to experience the joys of musicianship with. 

Newbould, Smith, and Watts are Zooming in from Los Angeles, during a twenty-minute lull in their non-stop tour of the United States. Since first forming on the Netflix show, the band has signed to Chugg Music and has released their debut EP, Afterglow. 

The boys reminisce about the show that gave them their start. 

“We just related to each other so much right off the bat,” Newbould says of the band formation process. “Our personalities played off each other very well, our senses of humour gelled quickly.

“At first, we were just going with it because we wanted to stay on the show. But then we met in person, spent some time together, and we knew within the first ten minutes of being in a room together: we actually want to do this.”

“There were so many good singers on that show, you couldn’t miss,” Watts adds. “So for me, it was just about finding people I connected with on a personal level, and that’s what we had.”

“I think that’s not what a lot of the other bands focused on,” Smith suggests. “They focused on music first.”

Reality shows, by nature, can be somewhat exploitative. Offering up juicy entertainment is the prerogative, thus elements of one’s private life become dished out for public consumption – something that Smith learned during his brief dalliance with Alison Ogden, member of rival girl band Sweet Seduction.

The camera, of course, eggs the romance on: when Smith harmonises during Midnight Til Morning’s performance of Ocean Eyes, the lens zeroes in on Alison’s admiring gaze; as Alison showcases her dexterous vocal acrobatics all across Sweet Seduction’s cover of I Want It That Way, Smith’s googly eyes and parted lips take up the entirety of the screen.

Drama inevitably ensues: Smith stays the night at Ogden’s, his band members are disappointed, warning him, “We don’t need no Yoko Ono coming here and breaking up The Beatles.”

Tensions rise, Smith threatens to leave the band, but things are smoothed over in the nick of time before a winning performance of The Goo-Goo Dolls’ Iris (complete with back flips). It’s a classic formula.

“When the show aired, it was a pretty big struggle,” Smith admits. “You’re watching yourself be perceived in a way that isn’t true to your character. And the events that occurred, you could write an essay on how things in real life were completely different to what was shown on the camera.

“So it was definitely peculiar seeing that situation roll out like that,” he adds. “But also, I think going into a reality TV show, you have to know – you have to be very, very aware that it’s a movie. It’s not reality. It’s entirely planned.” 

Building The Band was Liam Payne’s last show before he tragically passed away on October 16th, 2024. The former One Direction member’s death rocked the world.

“For us, working with Liam was a dream come true and a pleasure,” Watts says. “We’re always proud to talk about him and our connection to him because we want to keep his name alive, and what he did for us, and for his fan base.

“We’re just super grateful, and we just hope we’re making him proud by doing what we’re doing now.”

“I think we all knew Liam as someone who shaped our entire musical childhoods,” adds Smith. “One Direction was a really important part of our lives. Obviously, Liam was a total superstar and this God-like figure, but meeting him and realising that he was just a cool dude was so great.

“He was so relatable in so many senses, and you could have a conversation with him about anything. And I think we hold onto that a lot.”

“To the point that, on this tour, every single show, we’ve been doing a tribute song,” Watts adds. “We’ve been playing Midnights, which was one of his songs. It’s a really special moment for us and for our fanbase, because obviously there’s a lot of correlation there.”

In the wake of Payne’s death, Robbie Williams, a former member of Take That, spoke out about the abusive nature of fame, arguing that being in a boy band was exploitative, a one-way trip to encountering a host of mental illnesses. The boys weigh in.

“I think the world is a very different place from what it was when Robbie was going through that,” Watts says. “I feel like the media in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, especially in the UK, was awful to people. And I don’t think it’s the same world anymore. But in saying that, we’re also slightly older. We’re all in our twenties.”

“It’s harder to take advantage of us at this age,” Smith agrees. 

“And also,” Watts continues, “I remember having a conversation with Liam where he said, ‘It is business and you need to be careful, but just enjoy it, try to have fun, this is a once in a lifetime experience.’ And that’s what we’re trying to do.”

Newbould chimes in, “Going back on the age thing, too, that definitely helps. I always wanted to be in the situation I’m in now when I was 14, 15. And looking back, I’m so happy all of this didn’t happen when I was that age.

“Because there’s too much going on, too many contracts. It’s too much for a teenager.”

Midnight Til Morning has been characterised as a boy band, but it isn’t always a label that is taken seriously, largely due to its association with a young femme fan base. How, then, does this label sit with them?

For a moment, they all speak over each other. Eventually, Newbould’s voice cuts through: “I don’t think any of us are really worried about it.”

“It’s not a taboo word for us or anything,” Watts says.

Smith squints. “I guess we are a boy band, but we’re also just a band -- ”

“We’re a man band!” Watts cries.

“Yeah, we’re a man band!” Smith giggles. “We play instruments, we write music. I mean, I think of us as a cool band. We’re not dancing, we’re not wearing the same outfits or anything like that. But we are boys in a band. Men in a band.”

On August 5th, the band released their first single, Bye – a song that was born of a demo that fellow backflipper Benson Boone sent to them. Afterglow was then released on October 8th.

“I think every song is its own individual journey,” Watts says of the songwriting process.

“It’s important to walk into a writing session or a studio session with no ego,” Smith adds. “Because it will just take over the whole session. It’s not healthy, it doesn’t create community.”

The best songs, they say, are the ones written without any “glitz or glamour” – just the boys sitting in a circle, strumming their acoustic guitars, and opening up about their feelings.

The band is gearing up for a tour of Europe and the UK scheduled for early next year, with Adelaide’s very own pop princess Aleksiah tagging along as an opener. “Our fans are gonna love her,” Smith enthuses.

They are all grateful for each other’s company on the road. 

“I genuinely couldn’t imagine doing this on my own,” Watts says. “It would be a nightmare. We are brothers at this point.”

“I think the hardest part is maybe the fact that it can be a little lonely,” Newbould admits. “Like, you hop out the bus door and you go, ‘Where am I?’ You literally don’t know where you are. It’s usually just: street, fence. I couldn’t imagine doing it alone.”

They all spent their childhood dreaming of what they are doing now – so how does the reality compare to what they imagined?

“Growing up, I thought it would be the breeziest thing in the world. But I think we’ve all realised how exhausting it can actually be,” Smith says. “Obviously, it’s everything we’ve ever wanted to do, but there’s so much work that actually goes into it, and so many team members.”

“When you’re a kid, you literally think you just hop onstage, sing your songs, and that’s the whole career,” Newbould laughs, shaking his head at his younger self’s naïveté.

“It is the best job in the world, though,” Mason grins. “We’re having the time of our lives.”

Midnight Til Morning’s Afterglow is out now. Tickets to this week’s Australian tour are on sale now.

Presented by Frontier Touring & Chugg Music

MIDNIGHT TIL MORNING

​AUSTRALIAN TOUR – NOVEMBER 2025

Thursday, November 20th – Liberty Hall | Sydney, NSW (Lic. All Ages )

​moshtix.com.au

Saturday, November 22nd – Princess Theatre | Brisbane, QLD (Lic. All Ages )

​ticketmaster.com.au

Sunday, November 23rd – 170 Russell | Melbourne, VIC (18+) ​

​moshtix.com.au