On the back of their North American headline tour SOFT PLAY are doing their final leg supporting the Biffy Clyro tour.
Support slots in the OVO Hydro are difficult slots to fill, its a large venue that often sucks up any atmosphere before the value fills out for the headliners, we caught a brief few songs from support act “The Armed”s set prior who mentioned the atmosphere, not usually a great sign.
Coming to stage typically with “All Things” and from the start it was clear this wasn’t going to be a problem for SOFT PLAY, there may only be 2 of them but there isn’t a room their sound wouldn’t fill and if you judged by the tshirts in the mosh pit you might be confused about whether this was a headliner. As the short but sweet All Things finished Isaac removes his shirt for “is this ironic or self reflection?” Mirror Muscles followed by Isaac Is Typing featuring guitarist Laurie flying around the stage mid guitar riff.
Then the duo ventured into the crowd and explained the origins of “Fuck the Hi-Hat” (people saying they would never make it as a band with their setup) as we take a small trip back to couple of older songs before returning to the stage for “Punks Dead” which inevitably has the pit going absolutely wild. For the 13 seconds of “Girl Fight” Isaac calls for a women only mosh pit which is enthusiastically accepted resulting in one of the biggest pits of the evening.
They finished on Beauty Quest and The Hunter, it is a short set that probably gained them a bunch of new fans and reminded the rest of us what a formidable live act they are and has us hoping for a headliner in Glasgow soon.
Biffy came on after and were also pretty decent.
Words and pictures: Dale Harvey @daleharvey