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Bandleader Olli Appleyard on how the Leeds quartet fight the fast fashion of the music industry with multimedia escapism and unflinching dedication to the art form
Words by Rishi Shah
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Olli Appleyard has imagined Static Dress’ appearance on The Cover for a long time. “[NME] has a lot of creative energy, and I want to give our take [on] that,” he says. We’re tucked away in a coffee shop down the cobbled streets of The Calls in Leeds, and the band’s frontman is sipping his second hot chocolate of the day. “Some places want you to dumb down ideas… there’s not enough time put into photoshoots.
“It comes down to this bigger conversation,” the vocalist elaborates, teeing up the crux of our fascinating two-hour discussion. “We are rushing through everything as if it’s a product, shifting out music like Happy Meals at McDonald’s. ‘There you are! Consume, consume, consume. Keep filling my pockets.’ It leaves me head-scratching. The best thing you’ve ever done, you didn’t do overnight. It’s that cheesy saying: ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day.’”
The Leeds four-piece laid the first bricks upon their formation in 2018 and have since been called everything from art-hardcore to emo. As people tried to decode them, tracks like 2019’s hazy, Deftones-coded ‘Clean.’ and the throwback 2000s metalcore of ‘Courtney, Just Relax’, which appeared on their 2022 debut album ‘Rouge Carpet Disaster’, helped put them on the British heavy map. Soon, they were opening for Bring Me The Horizon and headlining tours in the USA, a nation whose cities currently dominate their streaming stats.
Such accolades are insignificant to Static Dress. Visionary-in-chief Appleyard is a purist, determined to solely make art for art’s sake. His considered yet dogged approach, where ideas often stew for years, enables the band to flesh out their concepts for maximum impact. Take March’s ‘A Live Death Display’ event: a secret, phone-free gathering in an untouched London cinema, where fans could play the band’s self-made Rouge Carpet Disaster: The Video Game upon arrival. A film was then screened, announcing their second album, ‘Injury Episode’, before the group hit the stage for a surprise gig.
“Creativity stems from limitations, struggle, and honestly, from working-class people” – Olli Appleyard
Moments before showtime, Appleyard turned to his bandmates – George Holding (bass), Sam Ogden (drums) and Vincent Weight (guitar) – as the four took stock of the fantasy they brought to life that night. He recalls the occasion not with cockiness, but a sense of conviction: “You can be bigger than my band, but you’re never going to do the things that my band’s capable of doing.” Behind the scenes, his desire to make moves of this calibre has been regularly shot down by risk-averse industry figures. But “when it pays off,” he tells NME, “there’s people patting you on the back who told you it was a stupid idea.
“People who work in music will be like, ‘Well, you didn’t hit this metric,’” he fumes, still livid about past experiences. “Measurements which people used to rely on so heavily for value, worth or position of a band now don’t mean anything anymore. The minute the [dominant] app – a creation that someone else controls – changes, the music industry loses all scope, meaning or understanding. It’s crazy how you can have absolutely no grasp on anything and have a job in this.”
The ongoing effects of a head injury Appleyard suffered during a show in 2025 mean retracing his upbringing doesn’t come easily. Raised in Bradford and then Bingley, he befriended Weight in primary school and met Holding and Ogden further down the line in local heavy music circles. All three joined Static Dress between 2021 and 2022, meaning Appleyard is the only founding member left.
Appleyard discovered alternative music through settings like the WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw soundtrack as he sought refuge from his “not great” reality on his PlayStation. “I want to provide any medium of escapism,” he says. “You’ve got a lot of bands doing a lot of good for people, [spreading] awareness, but unfortunately, I don’t want to be reminded of the real world sometimes.”
His parents banned scary films, so discovering Slipknot in Kerrang! magazine was his “first instance of fear”. Skating as a teenager spiralled into ’90s hip-hop, skate-punk and hardcore. With few friends to attend shows with, a socially anxious Appleyard stayed away from the spotlight, photographing and promoting gigs in Leeds, hoping to make a difference for other artists. After writing some songs with friends purely as a “portfolio extender”, his preferred medium shifted: to Static Dress.
Here, his artistic scope includes directing videos, designing merch and photography – including the band’s shoot for The Cover. Initially driven by affordability reasons – they took no profit from the band until 2024 – keeping everything in-house remains a principle he won’t budge on. “The minute I let control go somewhere else, it loses all meaning,” he explains. “I don’t want to be walked over. We’ve had people in the industry actively try to ruin us before, because they don’t like that we didn’t let them in.”
“I want to let people get lost in their own way to our stuff… It’s about inspiration, not admiration” – Olli Appleyard
A control freak, or someone merely fearful of his artistry being exploited for commercial gain? “I’m always open for ideas [from his bandmates], but a lot of the time, I’ve already got an idea of what to do,” he clarifies, showing NME over 100 song titles on his notes app. “My struggle is where I turn around and go, ‘Should we do this?’, because the minute plausible doubt comes into my head, I start losing focus and destroying the idea before I’ve built it.” Understandably, this DIY approach causes burnout, but more so from the pressures to make ends meet for his bandmates than the mountain of work itself.
Finalising the band’s recent 25-minute film went down to the wire. NME asks him about a quote displayed in it: ‘Not all creators create with good intentions.’ “Some people will create with self-validation at heart,” he explains. “‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ has gone from a fireman, astronaut and dancer to YouTuber or influencer. That’s insane, because it means your entire self-worth and creative drive stems from an app which someone else has made to advertise things. We’re becoming salesmen in a different light.”
So what are his intentions? “It’s always been about building a world and identity,” he responds, comparing it to a fashion brand or, in a callback to his youth, the 2002 Spider-Man film franchise and its all-encompassing takeover of merch, posters, and toys. “I want to let people get lost in their own way to our stuff and inspire people to do the same thing. It’s about inspiration, not admiration… it wasn’t, ‘Oh, I want to be famous.’ Because I want the opposite of that.”
Fame terrifies Appleyard. It can breed toxic echo chambers – he cites Kanye West’s recent comeback attempt – and parasocial fan relationships. He praises Lewis Capaldi for “authentically” handling his fame, and empathises with Chappell Roan, who’s been torn apart for setting basic boundaries. “Someone will ask something of me, I’ll say, ‘I can’t right now,’ and they’ll scorch you online for not giving them what you wanted,” he says. Exercising his right to a guarded life should not undermine his genuine appreciation for Static Dress’ fanbase. “This isn’t transactional,” he stresses.
“I don’t want to be walked over. We’ve had people in the industry actively try to ruin us before” – Olli Appleyard
Appleyard vents these frustrations in ‘Injury Episode’. The storyline, he tells us, follows two sisters. Representing the perfect form of celebrity, they are objectified, driven over the edge and killed by “greedy” and “obsessive” townspeople. “The people cannot live without them, so they bring them back to life and create this amalgamation of both of them; they go, ‘Oh, that’s not what I want,’ and discard them.” The pair appear circled by paparazzi vultures on the album artwork, all signs of life drained from them.
Appleyard admits he “can’t keep up with the pace of the modern day” on the slow-burning alt-rock of ‘…Hospice’, the preceding lyric “engrave each moment / into a memory” resonating with him even more since his head injury. While many songs explore the wider points we’ve discussed, they also offer deeply personal snapshots of his own life. The ear-splitting ‘Nostalgia Kills’ tackles emotional addiction, the dichotomy of “the used and the user”, and the release he found in letting life take the wheel: “Close your eyes and enjoy the ride”.
Featuring Florida post-hardcore legends Underoath, the track not only represents an intergenerational passing of the torch but also a seizing of the narrative in the face of endless comparisons. “All anyone ever says about this band is bringing them up,” jokes Appleyard, who’d actually not listened to them properly when Static Dress formed. In a similar vein, the figures he calls core inspirations don’t necessarily come from heavy music. He names fellow jack-of-all-trades The Weeknd as his “go-to”, alongside Hideo Kojima and Vivienne Westwood.
The production on ‘Injury Episode’ is human and ugly, often soaking vocals in harsh distortion and capturing the erratic frenzy of four musicians in the room. It reclaims the studio in Static Dress’ fight against the rapid-fire “conveyor belt” of formulaic, polished music. “It makes no sense,” Appleyard mutters under his breath, refusing to name any specific culprits on the grounds that online spats only make problems worse. (He once experienced that first-hand with Machine Gun Kelly.) He’d rather lead by example, proving why the dedication, space and time to wholly serve the art form should be the only end goal.
“Creativity stems from limitations, struggle, and honestly, from working-class people,” he declares. “I can only resonate with people who try really hard to push the boat [out]. When it’s something built with time, nurture and passion put into it, I’m like, ‘Thank god.’” The album’s closing track nails this mindset, exploring why items made with the care of your own hands trump anything that could be purchased. “It’s finding the value in people’s time, rather than cost, money, or status.”
With that ethos flowing through Static Dress, Olli Appleyard is building his own multiverse, with infinite depth – one that honours his nerdy younger self, while also connecting to others with the authenticity that defines his adult life. “The experiences I can make with people?” he says. “That’s the thing they’re going to be talking about at my funeral.”
Static Dress’ album ‘Injury Episode’ is released May 29 via Sumerian Records.
Listen to Static Dress’ exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here.
Words: Rishi Shah
Photography: Olli Appleyard
Label: Sumerian Records
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