Your music has rock foundations but is wrapped in glossy pop production. What made you want to bring those two worlds together?
Jasmine: Growing up, we were basically raised on pop music. It was always Capital Radio, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry playing constantly. Then as we got a bit older, we got really into rock music, a lot of 70s stuff like Pretenders and Blondie. We went really far down that road.
Poppy: When we first started Hotstamp, it was very inspired by that — we were much more of a punky, rocky band. But then we realised that pop is fun. There’s no need to be so serious, because honestly the most fun we’ve ever had is on stage, opening for Sombr, playing pop music. We wanted to bring that fun element in.
Jasmine: We still really appreciate all the rock stuff, and there might be some fuzzy guitars in what we do, but we want to make pop with an edge. It’s basically the two things heavily combined. We’re trying to make pop music with an edge, like the guitars and sounds of The White Stripes mixed with the songwriting of the Sugababes.
I saw you supported Sombr recently — how was that experience?
Jasmine: Honestly, it’s quite hard to talk about because it was just so good. Coming back to reality afterwards has been a bit crazy with the highs and lows, but it was amazing.
Poppy: We’ve never DJ’d in our lives. Our manager asked, “Can you guys DJ?” and we were like, “No.” Then he said, “For Sombr?” and we were like, “Yeah.” We literally found out the day before and had about five hours to figure out what we were doing, so we just pre-programmed everything — but we smashed it.
Jasmine: It was amazing. Poppy whispered to me that someone was watching from the side of the stage, and it was him, just smiling and pacing around. It was pretty obvious we weren’t really DJing, but it was really nice. We hung out with him afterwards — it was such a good night, so lovely.
You’re siblings — how does that affect the dynamic of the band?
Poppy: The good thing about being siblings is that we can tell each other anything. I want to say “with no hard feelings,” although today there have already been some hard feelings. But because we’re siblings, we patch things up really quickly and it never goes deep.
Jasmine: We’ve reached a point where we can be professional about it. A few years ago, an argument would ruin a whole day. Now we can go from a massive argument one night to meeting the next morning and just saying, “That was so annoying.” I don’t think you can really do that with friends.
Poppy: One really important thing we’ve learned is that even when we argue, we try not to say really hurtful things. A few years ago, we definitely would have. Now we keep arguments at surface level and avoid attacking each other in personal ways.
You both grew up in North London. What was that environment like, and do you think it shaped Hotstamp?
Poppy: I feel like anyone who grows up in London grows up really fast. Everything happens so quickly, and we were quite mad teenagers. We got a lot of craziness out of the way early, which meant that by the time we were 18, we knew this is what we wanted to do.
Jasmine: We were going to parties and meeting people who worked in music, and they’d always say, “Are you guys in a band? You look like you’re in a band.” Eventually we just started saying yes.
Poppy: We’ve always written and made music. When Logic first came out, our dad did a crash course and learned how to use it. I must have been about seven and Jasmine was five, and he’d write songs for us that we’d sing into Logic. So we’ve been doing it from a really early age.
Jasmine: He was a big musical influence and always took us to festivals like Capital’s Summertime Ball. That’s such a benefit of living in London – we saw so many artists. Katy Perry, Justin Bieber… I’m very blessed to say I saw One Direction three times.
I read that you wrote and recorded Josephine in a single day. Is your process usually that fast?
Poppy: Yeah, that song came together really quickly. The idea was something Jasmine had about a year earlier — we’d talked about it, and I had it in my notes. Nothing really came from it until we went into the studio without knowing what to write about, and it just came out.
Jasmine: With that song, we did a lot of world-building and image creation. We looked at loads of photos. My best friend’s called Josephine — she’s very theatrical — and the idea of pairing Josephine with murder just made sense to me. She’s actually very lovely and loyal, not a murderous girl at all. I wrote it in my notes app, made a demo by myself, and then we took it into the studio.
Poppy: It was a fast process. We usually write quite quickly — typically a song takes a maximum of two days. The way we write is very intense: we go into the studio with our producers from about 10am to 7pm, no breaks. You just sit there and write. If you get stuck, you don’t stop — there’s no tea break. We’ll literally ruminate over a single word for an hour.
You’ve mentioned film influences for Josephine, like The Crush, Jawbreaker, and The Neon Demon. How important is film to your songwriting?
Jasmine: We were actually just talking about this. I’m really passionate about films — I’ve always loved them. The Crush came to mind because it’s about fatal obsession, which is such an interesting topic, and that’s what Josephine is about too.
I recently watched Secretary with Maggie Gyllenhaal, and every shot in that film is like an amazing photograph. Films are definitely one of my biggest inspirations.
Poppy: For me, my favourite thing about music and films is relating to them. If I feel really sad, I’ll listen to sad music; if I feel happy, I’ll listen to happy music. I’m always looking for something that mirrors what I’m going through — a song or a film where I think, “That’s so me.” I also try to live out experiences I imagine being in films so I can write about them later, which often means I’m getting up to things I probably shouldn’t be.
Jasmine: That’s probably why we work well together. Poppy gets inspiration from relating to the material, whereas I don’t need to relate to what I’m writing about — I focus more on the visuals. Poppy lives it out, and I elevate the story. I actually find it more interesting writing about other people’s experiences.
Do you have plans to release more singles or an EP soon?
Jasmine: We have all our songs demoed and recorded, but we’re in a transitional phase where we’ve decided we want to be pop stars. So we’re revisiting a lot of our songs through this new lens and thinking about how they fit into the Josephine and Better Taste world.
Poppy: Before, we were straddling pop and indie rock, and it felt unclear — like, are we going to be a female Tooth, or not? And then we realised we’re not.
Jasmine: We were originally planning to release a song called Shockwave, which we played live this year, but now we’ve got a different plan. We don’t know what song will come next, but we know it’ll be really good. We’re refining the project, so it doesn’t make sense to just throw something out right now.
Your first show was in November 2022. What’s changed since then?
Jasmine: That’s a big question. Our lives have changed so much. I was 20, Poppy was 17 — everything’s different. Our performances, our writing, the songs — we’ve improved massively.
Poppy: It’s also important to say that when we started Hotstamp, our lives got completely flipped upside down. We were living at home, and then one day our mum came out as a lesbian. She left our dad for a woman who also left her husband, and they married a year later. It was a huge period of change and turmoil, but it pushed us closer together and into this project. It’s a happy ending — everyone’s really close now.
Hotstamp was kind of the glue that held everything together. Everyone wanted to support us and come to our shows, and that meant a lot.
Where do you see Hotstamp three years from now?
Jasmine: Ideally, we’re headlining tours, travelling the world, and putting on big production shows with really strong visuals.
Poppy: Some people think bands don’t need to dress up or put on big shows — that the music should speak for itself. But why not elevate it and have more fun? I love big shows. My lifelong dream is to play the Super Bowl halftime show — though that’s probably more of a ten-year goal.
Words: Donovan Livesey