By Laura Nineham
The Xcerts are a lovely little trio from Aberdeen who have just put out their debut album 'In the Cold Wind we Smile'. It went straight to number 90 in the iTunes album chart during its first week of release, sitting between Katy Perry and Queen.
"It was something crazy," said Murray when I caught up with him, "so we were just like 'that's amazing!' especially for a small band like I think we are. It's pretty amazing if you can get in the top 100 because you'd need quite a few downloads to get there."
The Xcerts are now singed to Xtra Mile Recordings, along with Frank Turner and the Rifles. Murray said they've been busy since getting signed: "Everything happened so quickly once we signed with Extra Mile that we didn't realise how much press we were gonna get, so the album got pushed back a week just in order to get extra radio play."
Singer Murray and bassist Joe have known each other for years and formed the band when they were still at school.
Murray told me he met Joe in the headmaster's office: "Well we got accused of hitting someone, but we were actually hugging him. It was the most bizarre experience of my childhood. We were trying to hug someone but he didn't want to be hugged. But yeah, we got accused of hitting him. It was crazy."
I was in a band at the time and we were looking for a bass player and I asked Joe if he could play bass and he said yeah, but he couldn't - he'd never touched a bass before!"
After they were finished with school, Joe and Murray moved to Brighton where they recruited their drummer Tom. "It got to the point with the band when we were like 17 or 18 when we had to decide whether we would continue with it or not," said Murray. "Our original drummer was living in London at the time so me and Joe moved to Brighton, during which time our original drummer left."
Their first major release was on Sam Duckworth's label after he got in touch with them on their MySpace page to say how much he liked the song 'Just Go Home'.
"I didn't think anything of it," said Murray. "He was hinting at putting it out and I completely missed that. I just thought it was very nice of him. I was like 'thanks a lot, see you later', and he was like 'no, no, no - are you gonna release this?' and I was like 'no, why?' and he was like 'I want to release it'."
Until recently the Xcerts had a hoax Wikipedia page which hosted a variety of information about the band, presented as fact, but none of it was true.
Murray explained: "We were like 'lets do one and try to set one up' and we kinda all went 'well, let's just tell everyone on our MySpace to have some fun on it and we just sent out a couple of bulletins saying 'put in whatever you want on the trivia page' and because there was so much nonsense the page got taken down!"
"There was no fact. It was all just total shit. We made another one and got people to put the stuff in the trivia bit and it actually worked out amazingly well!"
"We didn't anticipate how great a tool Wikipedia is for journalists. A lot of people were taking it seriously and had questions based upon the trivia page. It's mental - people obviously don't question Wikipedia. A lot of interviews we've done recently have been asking if, like some absolutely seriously, if my second name was Murray! It said on the Wikipedia page I changed my last name from Murray to Macleod in order not to get bullied!"
The Xcerts have been to Bournemouth before. They played iBar last year, but Murray said it wasn't a good gig at all because "there was only about 10 people there", but there is hope they may return. They will be touring again at the end of the year. "The last conversation I had with our manager, he was talking about doing like 40 dates," said Murray.
If you can't wait that long, the boys will be playing Boardmasters in Newquay this summer, as well as the Electric Bay, Wickerman and Truck festivals. They are just about to re-release their single 'Just Go Home', so there'll be no escaping the Xcerts this year.