Getting Sticky With STIFI In The Sex Capital Of The World

It was only last year that Sticky Fingers took a step back from touring and cancelled most of their UK dates with the intent of freeing up time for some much needed man love. And yet during their short hiatus they managed to produce their third LP Westway (The Glitter & The Slums). The key? A month in Thailand. 

"We've just sort of been together for a long time so it's kinda like five dudes in a relationship but without the sex." 

"Everybody sort of felt that we kinda needed a break, but we've found in the past that when we stop doing what we do we either [get] horribly depressed or get into trouble," explains Paddy Cornwall. "So we saw the opportunity to go to this amazing studio in Thailand as a working holiday." Seamus Coyle nods in agreement. "We can say and do a lot of really nasty things to each other, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we mean any of these things. We've just sort of been together for a long time so it's kinda like five dudes in a relationship but without the sex. Getting in these pathetic punch-ons on the bus about who was next in the microwave with the mac and cheese, or who drunk the last beer, so on and so forth. We're pathetic really. The music sounds good, so the music is the sex."

While we're on the topic of sex, STIFI had a few, ahem, wild moments while in the sex capital of the world — Pattaya. "It's not really a sexy city at all... It's sex tourism. Sex tourism - key word there," Coyle differentiates. "Rich Russian one percenters trying to get their load off kinda vibe," elaborates Cornwall. "I sorta fell into the mix of that. We didn't, like, get down with the lady boys or anything like that, but we did go to this bar where the centrepiece of entertainment was a boxing ring where these Muay Thai fighters were fighting each other. So we paid off the fighters to give us their shorts and their boxing gloves so that we could create a tournament of our own." "We've got the footage," Coyle laughs at our disbelief.

"It was absolutely pathetic fighting. It was me verses Beaker [Best] and we were kinda playing around," Cornwall says by way of an explanation. "Being the rhythm section in a band, we already have a fairly turbulent relationship so we didn't really feel the need to beat the fuck out of each other. But then [Freddy] Crabs jumped in the ring, our keys player, with our producer Dann Hume, and then I think Crabs got a bit too excited and basically beat the crap out of Dann. Dann could hardly walk!" "He was fucking paralytic," cracks Coyle, and Cornwall continues: "Then following that we went to this bar with a covers band playing everything from Evanescence to Green Day, Bon Jovi. And I think we kinda Elvis Presley-style managed to steal the show and take all the instruments off them and play this absolutely terrible gig. So that was a great night. Then we went back to making music again."

How's that for an anticlimax?