Our second band of this year’s Music Interview Marathon is swiss 5-piece Ophelia’s Eye, who gives a detailed description of how the band formed and how a book inspired their music and band name.
Band Name: Ophelia’s Eye
Members: Michel Egloff-Sieber (Vocals), Remo Lemp (Lead Guitar), Corinne Ryter (Rhythm Guitar), Marco Schweizer (Drums) & Sandro Suter (Bass)
Genre: Melodic Death Metal / Metalcore
Founded: 2020
Originated From: Dulliken, Solothurn, Switzerland
Discography: Fight for Us (EP, 2021) & The Demon behind My Mind (Single, 2021)
How would you describe your music?
We have influences both from the melodic death metal sound of Gothenburg as well as the early metalcore era of 2003 and describe ourselves as modern metal.
What is your musical creative process like?
We define special rehearsals in which we only jam and focus on writing new songs. When we are jamming we always record ourselves and when something triggers a feeling in us and makes us say “yes” – we keep this part and start refining it.
Besides that, we, of course, all jam by ourselves when practising and when someone has an idea, they record it and bring it into our jamming sessions and there we then build up the missing instruments and parts.
And with most songs, we refine it over time and in the studio when we have an idea to make it more interesting.
How did the band form?
Quite a long story – Ophelia’s Eye started out as a Project Penny and changed the name to Red Fire Dragon before our drummer Marco joined in 2017.
At this time, the band consisted of him, a guitarist and a bassist. When Marco met his school friend Remo at Greenfield 2017 by chance, he instantly knew that he needs Remo in his band as this worked really well when they played together in school.
As Remo was quite busy during this time, he needed some time but after one year decided to give it a try, came to a rehearsal and decided to stay. At this point, the band started out moving from covering songs to writing their own songs.
The guitarist left at the beginning of 2019 but Michel (ex. Sweet Massacre) joined, which was really a lucky case. Michel has placed an ad on Bandbuddy in 2016 that he’s a singer searching for a band. Nothing happened until 2019 Marco answered his ad. Just at this time, Michel got his first child but as it fitted very well, he then joined. The band name once again was changed to the current name Ophelia’s Eye.
In August 2019 Corinne saw an ad from Ophelia’s Eye that they are looking for a guitarist. But since the ad was already from the beginning of 2019 and Corinne only played the guitar for just under a year, she did not really believe that this would become something. But she was wrong – the answer from Marco came quick and only a week after Corinne came to a rehearsal and instantly knew that this was the right fit for her.
At this point, we had the feeling that we now have the constellation to start out, recorded demos in our room very quickly, built up our social media presence and organised our very first concert in February 2020 just before coronavirus measures took place.
But due to different goals, we split up with our bassist just two weeks before our first concert and played without a bass player until we found Sandro who joined in August 2020 and was really a lucky strike.
How did you come up with your band name?
Our current name is based on the novel The Sandman by E. T. A. Hoffmann. The story is about the traumatic childhood experience of the student Nathanael, which makes its way to the surface through the surprising encounter with the weather glass dealer Coppola. He believes he recognises the devilish lawyer Coppelius, who is responsible for his father’s death. When the beautiful but quiet Olimpia captivates him, he loses himself more and more between delusion and reality.
Olimpia is for us a characterisation of the goal we want to achieve with our music. In the course of the book, Nathaniel’s perception of Olimpia changes as he observes her through a pocket lens in her room: “But as he looked sharper and sharper through the glass, it was as if moist moonbeams were rising in Olimpia’s eyes. It seemed as if only now the sight was ignited; more and more vividly and vividly the glances flamed.” (page 28)
And towards the end of the story, Nathanel is enchanted by Olimpia. He calls her “heavenly-beautiful,” admires her every day, and is desperate and driven by longing.
We, too, want to “enflame” the audience, bring them to life and cast a spell over them. Through our songs, the listeners should also lose the connection to reality – at least for a while.
To make the name sound rounder, Olimpia is called Ophelia in the band name.
Who influenced you within the music industry?
For every one of us, the inspiration comes from another band. Michel (vocals) is mostly influenced by old-school hardcore since he grew up with this, Remo (lead guitar) has more melodic influences such as Arch Enemy, Marco (drums) is especially inspired by Eskimo Callboy and Ghostkid, Corinne (rhythm guitar) loves rhythmic bands such as Meshugga or Goijra even if this not exactly influences our songs and Sandro (bass) loves complex and experimental stuff such as Ice Nine Kills.
So there is a lot of different inspiration around in our band and as we develop, probably you will be able to hear a bit more of those different inspirations out in our songs.
Have you performed live much and what was your favourite gig to play at?
Unfortunately, we haven’t played live a lot so far. We played our very first show on February 29th in 2020 and just a week after, the shutdown came.
We had the luck that in Switzerland there were some months in which smaller shows were allowed to be played in September and October 2020 again.
But then, until September 4th 2021 we had a long break and were extremely happy to be able to play live shows again.
Our absolute favourite gig so far was the one on September 4th 2021 at the Met-Bar in Lenzburg – the hometown of Corinne. First, we were all so happy to play live again, second, we had an amazing audience who sang along and headbanged all their way through every song and last, there was an amazing crew at Met-Bar – everything from sound, and lightening to catering was just perfect.
What is the best thing about being in a band?
So many things. For us one of the greatest parts of it is to have like a second family in which all are there for each other no matter what happens, you can celebrate together, you also have fights sometimes but always find a solution and can speak openly.
But of course, also the shared passion for music and to be able to share it with other people, get to know a lot of different people and making experiences you would probably never do otherwise.
What’s the biggest problem you’ve had to overcome so far as a musician(s)?
The pandemic probably was hard on every industry concerned and for us, it was quite a dampener in the beginning since we just got the first taste of playing in front of people and would have been completely ready to start out right before the coronavirus measures were introduced.
Nevertheless, this time offered great chances and maybe was a bit of fate as well: Corinne got mononucleosis for over half a year and wasn’t able to do anything anyway and after the partial recovery we used the time to go to the studio and record our first EP, which we may have done later when we would have played more concerts.
Furthermore, we had set up two live streams during this time – one in a rehearsal room with a great friend of ours who has his bedroom in the same building and one out of a concert location, which was quite fun to try as well.
Of course, it was very important to keep the spirit high, which wasn’t always easy. Like anyone, each one of us was faced with our own difficulties and some of us had quite a hard time on a psychological level.
But in the end, we just tried to see chances and used them as much as we could and it brought us closer together since we had a lot of deep conversations and bonded like in a family.
What plans have you got coming up this year?
On October 8th 2021, our latest single was released with a story video. We went back to the studio at the end of October and began in November to record our full-length album.
A tour is also in planning, but more to that will be communicated as soon as possible. And hopefully, we get booked for some other concerts as well.
What is your ultimate dream as a band?
We would love to share our music with as many people as possible and of course also be able to play at festivals – the ultimate dream regarding festivals would be Greenfield in Switzerland, Summerbreeze in Germany and of course: Wacken.
You can find out more about Ophelia’s Eye by visiting their website and following them on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
If you’re in a band or a musician and would like to appear on this blog, please contact me and I’ll forward you an interview template.
Also, check out my other Music Interview roundups from 2018, 2019, 2020 & 2021.
