In under three years, Peace have morphed from bored students to the most talked about new band in Britain, and are about to take their show on the road again – visiting York and Newcastle. Andy Welch reports

THEY may be one of the most hyped new bands in Britain, but Peace have a funny idea of what their average fan looks like. “We were asked in an interview recently to draw a Peace fan,” says the band’s talkative drummer, Dom Boyce. “We couldn’t decide what they’d look like, so we did that thing where you have a piece of paper and fold it, and took it in turns to draw a different part of the body.

“The head was a sunflower, the body was a really hairy muscular man in a waistcoat, the legs were a kilt and Doug did the feet as giant plant pots. So that’s a typical Peace fan. Maybe we watched too much Bill and Ben when we were little?”

In reality, their fans are teenagers, and although they reference bygone bands, Peace seem to be ploughing their own furrow. Their live shows are sights to behold, with hundreds and hundreds of like-minded music fans losing themselves amid psychedelic grooves and summery melodies.

The band’s roots are not so colourful.

Originally from Worcester and now based in Birmingham, there’s no mythical story about how brothers Harry and Samuel Koisser, Douglas Castle and Dom Boyce, all sixth form students, came together to form Peace. If anything, it was just plain boredom.

“We formed in 2009, when we were all working. We all had jobs. Really, really terrible jobs,” says frontman Harry Koisser.

“I was holding a stick board in Birmingham for a nightclub called Face. Doug worked in an office, which is funny because he’s the most un-office job type person you can imagine, Dom was doing manual labour, and Sam worked at HMV. Quite funny, we had jobs but universally hated them.

When you’re 19 or 20 I don’t think anyone wants to be working.”

A few local gigs in Birmingham and momentum started gathering.

Enough for them to jack in their day jobs and start concentrating on the band full-time.

“The band was clearly something we wanted to do, and we thought if we carried on it might take off a bit, although we didn’t think about the future too much, we just did it. We were bored, more than anything,” says Koisser.

“More than anything, the entire industry seemed to be based in London and it didn’t seem like something people from Birmingham could just break into. I still think it’s quite weird that we did,” he adds.

RELEASED last week, their album, In Love, blends early 1990s indie influences with more classic 1960s sounds and is finished with a contemporary sheen, courtesy of producer Jim Abiss.

“We’re not that nervous about releasing an album,” says 21-year-old singer Koisser. “We’ve done it all before, just on a smaller level, with our EP,” he says, referring to the EP Delicious, which was released in September last year.

“Actually, saying that, releasing the EP was nowhere near as big as this.

I’m just trying not to think about it.”

He is also extremely tired, having just returned from the annual Texas music conference South By South West. He says he’s not been to sleep in four days, and it’s taking its toll on his concentration.

But as well as winning fans in the UK, Peace have already started an assault on the US. In Texas, at the annual South By South West music conference, they and Palma Violets were among the most in-demand British bands.

If they sound a bit like Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses, Koisser isn’t sure why, explaining that his parents mainly listened to Led Zeppelin, The Velvet Underground and The Who when he and his brother were growing up.

“The first show we did was at the end of 2010,” says Koisser. “A mate of mine was putting on a show and had (Australian psych rockers) Tame Impala on, so let us support. We didn’t really have any idea what we were doing. It seemed to go OK, so we just experimented for a bit after that.

“Eventually we recorded some demos, although we didn’t know how to write songs or anything. It was fun working it out.”

For their EP and subsequent album, they decamped to Lincolnshire’s Chapel Studios to work with Jim Abbiss, who worked on Arctic Monkeys’ award-winning debut, and Adele’s record-obliterating brace of albums, 19 and 21.

“In Love took five weeks,” says Koisser. “We didn’t think about anything else, which felt really good, just concentrating on one thing.”

This month sees the band tour the UK for the second time this year, while a summer full of festival appearances beckons.

“I think it’s what I’m looking forward to most,” says Boyce. “We don’t want people to read about us and get bogged down with expectation. That can be really dangerous, so we just want to get out there and actually show people what we’re about.

“It’s flattering having journalists write nice things about you, but ultimately, we succeed or fail on how good we are as a band.”

TOUR DATES: April 13, Duchess, York; April 14, Cluny, Newcastle