As tickets go on sale for the biggest gig of Biffy Clyro‘s career so far, the band caught up with NME to tell us about their plans for Finsbury Park, staying relevant in shifting times, their ‘Band Aid’ style single for Scotland’s World Cup bid, and already being at work on new material.
Fresh from the release of their acclaimed 10th album ‘Futique‘, the Scottish alt-rock trio announced a massive gig to 40,000 fans at London’s Finsbury Park next July where they’ll be joined by Nothing But Thieves, Don Broco, Marmozets and more.
“We’ve put together a fucking unbelievable bill,” frontman Simon Neil told NME. “We’re lucky that a lot of people wanted to play, but we wanted to lean into British rock bands and be proud of where we come from. Nothing But Thieves, Marmozets, Don Broco, it’s dynamite.
“Sometimes we put a bill together and it’s pointed. ‘I want people to learn about this band!’ Magic will happen.”
The Biff’ invited NME to their AirBnB on a recent stop in London. “It looks like we’re showing off, but this was cheaper than going to a hotel,” revealed drummer Ben Johnston. It’s all part of their current approach to stay calm, measured and mindful, a stark comparison to past hotel-trashing times.
“We were messy and we partied hard,” Neil admitted. “My biggest mistake was leaving a $100 bill behind when we partying hard in an Inverness hotel room. I was like, ‘Fuck!’ I felt like such a bad-ass, but it was a shitty wee hotel. I left it there and I really noticed. I wasn’t yet at a point where I could afford it.
He continued: “When we were dirty, we stayed at The Columbia once. We were convinced there was something dead in the room. You know that unmistakable smell of death that people talk about?”
Bassist James Johnston added: “You could trash that place. We were all fucking itchy with scabies, man.”
Now free of scabies and on something of a winning streak, Biffy were in a celebratory mood when they met NME. Enjoying a break before their sadly now cancelled US tour, the band spoke with confidence off the back of recent ‘Futique’ underplay shows ahead of UK arena shows in the new year.
“We met people at those acoustic shows who’ve been coming to see us for over 15 years, and they were saying that this was the best they’d ever seen us,” said James. “It was whisper quiet. To get that on new songs with everyone listening was really nice.”
Simon agreed: “We still struggle with praise, and now 10 albums in, you can’t take that for granted. This is a culmination of all of our work in this record and we’d have been heartbroken if it hadn’t been received well. If everyone said it was shit, then we wouldn’t feel good about it.
“We’re fucking buzzing. We’re deliberately making January the ‘Futique’ tour, because it’s our new album tour. We’re not coming out and playing two songs from it. People are really into it, and I don’t think we’ve ever had a tour sell out so early in advance. It’s a fucking miracle!”
At this stage of their 30 years together, the band find themselves treading a balancing between finding their place in the musical landscape while also enjoying the compulsion to just be themselves.
“We know a point will come where the new stuff we’re doing won’t be as relevant as our older stuff, because that’s just the nature of ageing and being around for a while,” Simon admitted. “To be on our 10th album and feel like that’s the focus of the tour is a bit of a miracle. We’re so delighted. We struggled to make this record, so it means more that we came back to a positive.
“It’s a relief, but not a careerist way – the new music needs to matter.”
Check out how full interview with Biffy Clyro below, where they tell us about fighting to stay on top of their game and challenging themselves, some “idiosyncratic” new songs already in the bag, and plans underway to record Scotland’s World Cup 2026 anthem.
NME: Hello Biffy Clyro. You’ve just announced the biggest gig of your career at Finsbury Park. Does it feel strange to be doing this now?
Simon Neil: “I think about that a lot: about maintaining relevance and how that’s even possible after 25 years. How is it even possible to be a three-white-boy rock band in 2025 when we’re in such a dynamic and progressive time? I’m very wary of where we sit. We all listen to a lot of new music and it’s really important to keep your ear to what’s fucking happening and all the exciting shit. That’s why bands fail – they have their five or 10 year golden period of their own music and still aspire to the same old shit. The foundation of your music inspiration doesn’t change, but you’ve got to keep adding to that foundation to be inspired or else it will just fucking dissipate.”
James Johnston: “You’ve got to keep taking risks. You’ve got to have something new to say.”
Simon: “That’s why working with [producer] Jonathan Gilmore was so important for us. You’ve got to work with someone from the new way of recording where you don’t need a massive studio and $100,000. We were aware he’d worked with The 1975, and we don’t sound like The 1975 but we wanted to do things in a more modern way. You listen to the Turnstile record [‘Never Enough‘], and that’s a hardcore and pop-punk record, but it doesn’t like Snapcase or Helmet – it sounds like now. That’s what’s so fucking exciting. It’s very important to try and stay relevant. That’s not about dressing like you’re 25 or singing like Frank Ocean….”
How are you enjoying this downtime after releasing the record and before the tour, given the trouble you spoke about in regrouping for ‘Futique’?
Simon: “We just needed a fucking break. Normally you finish the album and there’s that really annoying two month period before it comes out. The great thing was that the music was fresh for us when it came out, but we couldn’t have done a tour, we’d have been done in. It’s a different headspace.
“Also, I really want to make sure that we have a really fucking great time on tour. I really want to lean into the more celebratory nature of what we do and the fact that we are still here. Playing live is such a high-wire act, and at times I haven’t enjoyed it because I haven’t engaged with it in the right way. I’ve just been too critical of us and really hard on myself. I really want to fucking enjoy it. I didn’t enjoy the couple of tours after the pandemic. I was worried that I’d fallen out of love with it and it had lost its magic. Of course, that’s not true and I just needed a wee fucking break.
“It was deliberate to wait until January. Now 2026 is about us on a fucking stage. I don’t know when, but we’ve got about 12-15 other songs we’ve got to finish and put out when we get a chance. Our eyes are all on the fucking stage.
“I am grateful that we’re still a band. The last time we spoke, you asked if we needed that intensity to make a record. I was like, ‘Fuck, maybe’. Bon Iver just said that he doesn’t know if he’s going to make another record. This is maybe the first time in my life where I’m like, ‘Do Biffy need another record?’ I think it’ll change. Cliche alert, but we make the music because we like making music. Obviously then you hope people like it! For now, I need to get my head straight with playing live, being on the road, and then we’ll see what happens.”
And kicking off 2026 with an arena tour. Happy New Year, eh?
James: “It’s a good start to the year. January for me, as it is for most people, is fucking hard-going. To be straight out there fucking having it just feels perfect.”
Simon: “It’s a little star amongst the darkness. Even when you’re going to shows at that time of year, it’s fucking miserable but then you get in there and its magic.”
What have you got planned for the January shows? What’s going to set them apart from previous Biffy tours?
Simon: “We’ve got an awesome stage production. You wouldn’t believe the lights! It’s a very ‘Futique’-centric show. I’m going to spend a couple of weeks over Christmas in Amsterdam really working to plan the show as something different. When we did ‘A Celebration Of Endings’ from the Barrowlands [livestream performance], that opened up this theatricality to what we do that doesn’t take away from our authenticity. We can strike that balance between having the most intimate moments but also the most razzmatazz and Liberace-esque. There are also a few new songs that don’t have guitar in them.
“We’ve a few things up our sleeve but we’re going to choreograph it differently. We’re not scared to try something new. All bets are off.”
And then to Finsbury Park, to 40,000 people…
Simon: “It’s fucking exciting. London matters a lot to us. We really love our time here. There’s been a bit of a liberation for us playing over the last five years. Plus Finsbury has such a massive history.”
What have you got in store for your ‘big moment’?
Simon: “We won’t know yet. Things will become clearer once we’ve played the shows at the start of the year. We don’t want it to be the same show, but inevitably it will echo it (unless we bring out 18 new songs and decide to play them!) The way to make the show exhilarating for us is to lean into the fact that it’s a celebration and it’s not time to challenge. We’ve sometimes made the wrong choice, thinking ‘It’s time to challenge the audience’.
“I was watching Oasis and that was really liberating. I spent most of the time watching the crowd, and that joy in just the beauty of what music is. You’re not thinking, ‘Oh that song’s from 2003’ or ‘Oh, they only played one song from whatever’. It doesn’t matter because it’s just fucking happening to you. I’m just trying to be optimistic.”
James: “It wasn’t that long ago that we weren’t even able to get together and play shows so it still warrants a fucking celebration when it happens, you know?”
Simon: “We long in the tooth enough to have songs from a couple of decades that people do want to hear, but we don’t need to only play songs from 10 years ago. We will be playing songs from all our records, and I think that’s what’s so exciting. When we play ‘Goodbye’, ‘A Little Love’ and ‘Two People In Love’, they will be the ‘moments’, as much as ‘Many Of Horror’.
“I used to bristle at the idea of ending on your biggest song. Aye! Of course you should. We were lucky enough to tour with Foo Fighters and you never went, ‘Why the fuck are they ending with ‘Everlong’?’”
But you must have some bucketlist dream of what you want to do at a mega gig like this?
Simon: “That Iggy Pop or Frank Carter standing in the crowd thing – I’ve always wanted to do that at a big show. That shot of Iggy in Detroit in the gold pants, oh man. Other than that, we’re defensively not thinking too much about that yet.”
James: “It’s not going to be a shy and retiring show. It will be all bells and whistles.”
Simon: “This will be one of the most important shows of our career. This is milestone shit. There are very few times in your life when you know you’re about to do something important. This is one of those occasions. There have been some great shows that happen at Finsbury Park, and we want this to be the one that defines the summer.
“That sounds naive, as we’ve been around for a while, but it’s going to be magic and unforgettable.”
And you mentioned having 15 or so new songs already written. What can we expect from them?
Simon: “They’re less focussed, as always. I like the beauty of the fact that these other songs have been worked on less so there’s more freedom. They’re flapping the breeze and we can focus on our eccentricities. There’s a liberation in knowing that people who are really into our band will listen to them at this stage. It fills the story and completes our picture.
“There are some garage rock songs on there, one of the best country rock songs I’ve ever written.”
James: “Have you written many?”
Simon: “I have actually, thank you very much! These aren’t as rock band-y. We deliberately wanted to define our band on ‘Futique’. Everything had a relative familiarity. These songs are much less Biffy.”
Will it be an album or a string of singles and EPs?
Simon: “I would like it to be an album. I’m still old-school. You show that you’re making a serious statement with an album. I like how they fill in the gaps and tell the story. Realistically, we’ll struggle to do it before next summer. We’ll hopefully get in with [Jonathan] Gilmore and finish them off.
“I keep thinking, ‘Do we need new Biffy music?’ This keeps us creating and moving forward without having an existential crisis. I was just in Barcelona and wrote another fucking seven songs and I don’t know what to do! I want to complete the ‘Futique’ statement first and we don’t want to say anything new yet but I can’t help but do new stuff. That’s a good sign. We’ll take it as a positive that there’s life in old fucking dog yet.
“I know that’s ludicrous to say on your 10 album, but we’re still on this fucking journey. We’re still finding new ways to do shit. I’ve read a bunch of reviews of ‘Futique’. Some people think it’s the same old shit, but the right people know it’s a celebration of us along with something new. The great thing is that releasing this album made me feel encouraged. It’s not the end of the road. Not to sound cynical, but at some point it will be the end of the road – and it ain’t fucking now.”
So big things coming in 2026?
Simon: “The party’s starting because the Tartan is marching. We’re gonna do a fucking Band Aid style single for Scotland’s World Cup after qualifying. We’ve got the chorus. Here we go.”
Ben Johnston: “We’re gonna get Capaldi, we’re gonna get Nutini, Spiteri.”
Simon: “All the Italians! Finsbury Park is exciting, but Scotland in the World Cup is even more exciting.”
‘Futique’ by Biffy Clyro is out now, with the band heading out on a UK and Ireland arena tour in January before they headline London’s Finsbury Park on Friday July 3, 2026. Visit here for tickets and more information.