History
When Safe Hands first got a touring lineup together, we were fueled by naiveté and a desperate need to be noticed at any cost. Typical gig scenes included throwing our instruments, invading the personal space of an audience, breaking things under the guise of "putting on a show." We delighted in our contrived chaos. We watched friends leave our shows with separated limbs.
The older we grew, the more we realised that this behaviour was extremely ignorant and resulted in serious damage to venues and social reputation alike. The blame can't entirely be easily laid at the altar of being young and stupid; it was simply the result of feeling the need to play to genre stereotypes.
Five years later we now find that history continues to come back to bite us. We began to try to calm overzealous macho behaviour at shows and were met with slurs and threats of violence. And who could blame them? The last time they saw Safe Hands years earlier we behaved in the exact same way. Shows dwindled, tour offers dried up entirely, members left for the real world.
If you've caught a show in the past year you'll know that things are different. We largely play entirely new material which has impacted our turnouts significantly but we don't care. There's no less passion to the music but we want to exist in (pardon the pun) a safe space. There is no place for violence or hostile behaviour in what we do. Shows should not leave women at the edge of the room afraid of having a table upended on them. Yelling should not always equate to aggression. We can't delete our history but what we can do is move forward and attempt to atone for those dark years bit by bit.
2016 will see the release of a new record, a new focus, a new Safe Hands. Thank you all for your continued patronage. We will sink or swim by our history. No longer hardcore, never heroes.
