Interview: Hotel Caviar Talk About Their New Single "Flip Side" and Upcoming EP "3 Star Review"

We connected with Minneapolis based rock band Hotel Caviar for an exclusive interview to discuss their newly released single “Flip Side”, their upcoming EP “3 Star Review”, how the band came together and much more.

After reading our Q&A with Hotel Caviar, be sure to connect with them on their website and social media and be on the lookout for their EP, “3 Star Review”!

Congratulations on the release of your new single "Flip Side", which will appear on your upcoming EP "3 Star Review". Why did you select this single as the lead release?

Thanks! We were all over the board while writing this EP as far as lead singles go. There were 2 other contenders that at one point in time, each one seemed like it was going to be the lead. I even have final artwork for one of them hahaha, but in the end, and after showing our rough mixes to other people to get opinions, ‘Flip Side’ almost unanimously came out on top as the best ‘single’. That’s not to downplay the awesome-ness of the rest of the EP, but ‘Flip Side’ is a great introduction to us, we think.

What can we expect sonically and thematically from the "3 Star Review"? What there a certain overall theme that the band had in mind while developing the EP's songs?

Well, honestly, there wasn’t exactly an overall theme for this. We are still a new band, and we are feeling everything out and how our sounds mix. With all of us being former members of very different long term bands, ‘Hotel Caviar’ is a new experiment. It’s one that is going very well, and we really love what we have created so far, but I think this EP is more about really finding our sound as a group.

Following up on the last question, were there songs recorded that did not make the final cut for the EP? If so, why did they not?

Yes and no? TL;DR we have dozens and dozens of demo recordings that are in various states of being finished. Some of them we had played around with and thought they were going to make this EP, but then we wrote something better and just kinda forgot about them hahaha.

There are others that we are still working on that will for sure make future releases, but for our debut, we wanted to make ‘3 Star Review’ short and sweet, just to get some music out there and start really building a fan base and showing the world that we're alive :)

How did you guys come together to form the band and where did the name "Hotel Caviar" originate?

Again, the TL;DR version, because otherwise I’d have to write out 10 years of band history BS hahaha. But the short-ish version is that timing really just worked out. The other bands that we were in had sort of dissolved or gone on hiatus. Abisha was performing as just ‘Abisha Uhl’, and was talking to our producer and good friend Wally J. She was looking for basically hired guns at first, but Wally hit Chris and I up, and we went to meet up with Abisha to chat. We had met in the past through various musical whatnots, but nothing super major. So we went over to a legit pirate ship to meet with her (there are pics, I’m not making that part up hahaha). We all hit it off, and just sort of started writing music together. Eventually, people came and went as happens with band shit, but we talked to Mr. John and Ms. Steph about joining the project, and the rest is the history we are hoping to make…or something hahaha.

As for the name 'Hotel Caviar', it's sort of random but stuck. We were playing around with 3 or 4 other names, but nothing was really sticking home. Abisha's cat is named 'Caviar' and I think we made a joke about him being pretentious or something and the whole house was just the 'Hotel Caviar' hahaha.

When it comes to new song development, what is the creative process for the band? Are the melodies developed before the lyrics or vice versa?

That kind of varies. For some of our older songs, like ‘Love Isn’t’ (which we previously released under Abisha’s name), she came to us with an acoustic guitar and just kinda played the base of the song. We took that and built on it to make it what it is today.

For a lot of our newer songs, Chris especially, but any one of us with a random riff or progression will just bring it to the table at band practice, and we hack away at it together as a team to make a song structure. Lyrics and melodies depend, it can honestly go either way. There have literally been songs that had one line dictate the direction of the rest of the song, and other times when we are trying to lock something in last minute in the studio haha. Each song definitely has it’s own story and process to it, but that makes each one that much cooler and unique….at least to us….hope everyone out there digs the new tracks too!!

And on that note, we were slated to release the EP online April 1, with our release show that following Friday….buuuuuttttt….as the world is currently on fire, obviously our show is postponed, and we have decided to hold on releasing the EP until we can at least lock in a new date for the show. But it is coming, I promise!!! Maybe we'll release another track as a single for now to entertain everyone on lockdown. Keep your eyes and ears peeled, and stay safe out there!!!

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