George Ward
Freelance journalist and online editor for CLUNK. Can be found out and about in Bristol, finding cheap records or having a pint on King Street.
With their second EP out this year, a new single just released and a huge 2025 on the way, we chat with Lip Filler
Lip Filler are an indie rock band. At least that’s what their merch says.
The South London band dropped their second EP ‘witchescrew’ this year, completely shaking up their sound and packing quite literally as much as they possibly could into 12 minutes. The project jumps from indie to punk to trap to hip-hop to experimental and is one of the funnest releases of the year.
We chat with frontman George Tucker and guitarist/vocalist Verity Hughes about their wild 2024 and their even wilder 2025.
Can you talk us through how Lip Filler came to be?
Verity: We’ve known each other for a really long time. Me and Jude, the other guitarist, went to school together. Me and George went to another school together and me and Jude had a band when we were like 15.
George would actually come to our gigs, which was really cute. And so we all moved to the same uni and we all lived together in second year. We all knew that we played instruments and had similar interests and tastes. So it just naturally happened that someone would be picking up a guitar or a bass or some drums and start playing.
But it wasn’t until like one of our friends said, we’d love to get you guys to play a show for us. So we were like “we need a name and let’s actually make this a proper thing”. Since then, we’ve just been doing it as Lip Filler.
Where did the name come from?
Verity: I love this question. We kind of formed the band before we had the name. As I say, we had this gig booked, we were like, “oh gosh, we need a name”. We had a few other ones, which didn’t stick, which I think we’re all pretty glad about.
I think it was always going to be something humorous and tongue-in-cheek, which it definitely ended up being. We went through a category of cosmetics and I just said, “lip filler”. We all kind of looked at each other and I think everyone but George was like, “yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s it”.
George: Yeah, I didn’t like it initially. Initially I was like, no, no, no, I don’t like it. And then literally like 24 hours later, I fucking love it.
Well, you’re stuck with it now, you can’t do anything about it.
Verity: I’m happy about that. You don’t want to get 5 years into touring and change your mind! Unless you’re a band like Thee Oh Sees.
Your second EP came out this year. How has the response been? Have your fans picked up on it? Have you got new fans from it?
George: I think we definitely got new fans from it. It was definitely a different vein that we went into stylistically for the second EP. So I think that definitely brought a lot of new fans on. Songs like ‘followup’ and ‘CARLING’ you wouldn’t find on EP1 at all.
It was cool because we had people who stuck with us from EP1, when we initially signed to Chess Club and were really into the whole 2000s indie rock thing, on board with us, but we also had some new people who really appreciated the more modern sounding things we were doing, the more UK dance and grime influence
You talk about different genres quite a lot and the EP definitely jumps around sound-wise. Is this a deliberate move on your front or is it just a result of what you guys are listening to at the moment?
George: I think it was definitely a deliberate move. There was a lot of discussion about what we wanted to do for ‘witchescrew’ before we even went to the studio with it. There’s songs like ‘Limelite’ which are an exception, because they were songs that were written so early on in our lifespan.
But the beef of ‘witchescrew’, we wanted to go with this philosophy where it was crazy left turns. You’re driving on a really sharp bendy country road and you fucking don’t know what’s gonna come next. That’s like why we made whacky creative decisions, like dropping a trap beat switch. That didn’t get put in until we got in the studio and we were just like…
Verity: “Fuck it.” I think it’s quite a statement to do so early on in your career but I think we wanted to have so much creative freedom and to experiment with the second EP. Even from the first EP, I know we all had this energy bunched up that we wanted to let out with us having so many different musical opinions and influences.
Production wise, we chatted about it going from really lo-fi to really hi-fi. I like a lot of hyper pop music, so we were like, “let’s just turn this up, let’s turn the kick up!”.
It’s quite funny, so many bands put such an emphasis on genre and with you guys, it’s all over the place. And then you drop merch just saying “Lip Filler are an indie rock band”.
George: You hit the nail on the head. We just wanted that merch piece to just be fun. There’s something really funny just about boiling it down to just that and just letting the music speak for itself instead of being like (pretentious voice) “we’re just doing this thing and that thing and mixing grime with” blah blah blah.
Do you enjoy the unpredictability of Lip Filler at the moment or do you feel like you’re going to settle into a more consistent sound soon?
George: I think that was the whole point of EP2, it was a crash course.
Verity: It was for us to learn things as well. There’s definitely stuff that we won’t repeat from doing that EP but it was just really good to experiment with that. The stuff that we’ve been doing recently, I think we are finding more and more the sonic signature and patterns of how we write. The Lip Filler sauce is being brewed.
George: It’s bubblin’!
Is writing a full band activity?
George: I moved out of London in the summer this year, so I’ve had a lot more free time to write music.
Verity: I would say George particularly has been bringing the bulk of the ideas but I think we work so well when it’s someone bringing in one idea and we just feed off that. I’ve noticed we are so much quicker now at writing a song and putting something together within the day and just coming up with the guitar parts, coming up with the drum bits.
Last year we got a remix from Jacob Jefferson. How was it giving your music to someone else and seeing it through someone else’s eyes? Or ears, I guess.
George: We’ve already always trusted Jacob, haven’t we?
Verity: We absolutely love Jacob and the idea of Jacob remixing something, because he’s a talented producer and a friend. But I think we are always going to be a band that wants to do these genre-throwing curveballs.
Those opportunities always excite me so much, when someone else who’s making a completely different type of music wants to reinvent the kind of track in their own way. That gets me the most excited. When we’ve had little house parties or George is DJing, that track is always in there.
While you’ve been doing all this writing, what have you been listening to?
George: I feel like Verity has a much better knowledge of music than me because she works in a record store! I’ve been so bad at listening to new music this year.
Actually, there’s this guy called Bruiser Wolf. I don’t know if I recommend it actually, but it’s fucking funny. It’s weird as fuck. It’s got a weird flow. I love the MGMT album. We both did, I think.
Verity: We as a band absolutely love MGMT, they’ve been a big influence.
There’s two artists that are from Denmark called ML Buch and Astrid Sonne and they make this really beautiful experimental pop with roots in traditional classical music training.
fantasy of a broken heart are great. Two of them are members of another group called Water From Your Eyes.
We interviewed them a few months ago actually!
Verity: Oh, no way! I went to see them at ICA and I met fantasy of a broken heart and I just told them that the songs they put out this year are so special and dreamy and so needed in the world right now.
They were really sweet and then they texted me and they said “oh, we’re playing Lip Filler in the car!” and I told George “Water From Your Eyes are listening to our music!” and he was like “shut up, that’s fucking nuts!” That whole New York scene is really cool. I have aspirations for Lip Filler going to New York eventually. I think we’d fit in quite well there.
George: We’d thrive.
What’s next year looking like for you guys? Is your new single ‘Tricky’ part of a bigger project?
George: Next year is big for us. ‘Tricky’ is definitely the start of something new and a step in a new direction – a more coherent, realised direction and settling in our sound. These past two years have just been about close friends forming a band and just getting to know each other even better and just being comfortable with what we do.
The plan for next year is that we’re going to come with a lot of new music. We’re in writing mode right now and we’re not planning to do a live show for quite a while
We’re going to be doing a tour at some point next year and just expect a lot of new music and a more settled direction. A more grown-up Lip Filler in a lot of ways.
Listen to ‘Tricky’ here:
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