Insider Trading on situationships, spatial concepts and their new single, ‘Porcelain’ 





Porcelain by four-piece Insider Trading is the newest single to come out of the band’s repertoire. I sat down with the lyricist, vocalist and rhythm guitarist, Cameron, at his favorite pub in Govanhill, Glasgow on a warm July evening.



Daisy: Thanks for joining me part-two for our second ever interview


Cameron: Slightly less members than before 


D: Slightly. But boy am I glad you’re back 


C: As am I. 


D: Firstly, congratulations on the release of Porcelain.


C: Thank you very much 


D: I first heard the song at Cowgate Block Party. It’s a fantastic song, and I'll be asking you a lot about it. But firstly, how are you feeling about it being out? 


C: I’m feeling good. I’m glad it’s out. It was really good to get in and record something for the first time in over a year… oh no… almost two years actually. So I’m really glad we could still do that and make something we like and that it wasn’t terrible. So yeah, I’m happy. That sounds really negative. But I’m happy. 


D: From the NNWNF Interview, you said this was about your time in Oxford. Tell me a bit about that. What inspired the song? 


C: Yeah. When I moved to Oxford I was a few months out of a long term-relationship and in a new phase of life. And as one does when they’re out of a long-term relationship and move to a new city, you have a string of situationships. And over that year of situationships, I kind-of took all the people that I was dating - not even just dating, but like – fancied - and thought about my own personality and turned it into one person that I really wanted to critique, and basically imagined what that person would be like a wrote a song about them. 

I basically had a series of relationships with people that – and this sounds bad – I didn’t like very much. That sounds terrible. Not like entirely, like they weren’t bad people. I kind of realised I had a bit of type. Being very wealthy, aloof, art-sy people. Yeah. Don't ask me why that was my type. But I had the same experience with a lot of them. A kind of disconnect, and a weird, strange feeling. It was a very complex emotion. I don’t know. I was in a place where there was a lot of wealth, and a lot of wealthy people. I’d been at Edinburgh four years before that, so it wasn’t my first experience with that. But it was my first time really confronting the fact that I was attracted to that. 


D: That sounds like a complex feeling to navigate.


C: Yeah… yeah. A lot of what I wanted to get across was that sense of aloofness, and uncaringness. Which I think is often inherent to a situationship in itself. It’s a very cold way of being with someone. That [lyric] was in regards to one specific night, one person that I was with, that I slept with, and was pissed off that I slept with after the fact, onwards. But then it was a personality that I felt myself absorbing, at times. And I was like, ‘that’s fucking terrible, why would you ever say that to someone?’





D: It’s interesting when Eve comes in and overdubs the lyrics on the track. Because before that, it's you telling the story, only from your focal point, but then when Eve comes in, I think it really humanises it for me. 


C: Eve is a humanising force. 


D: And she’s a bloody great bassist too. 


C: She is!


D: What would you say to the person who stole Eve’s pedal board if you could meet them? 

C: That sucks that you did that [...] but it’s symptomatic of a larger thing. It sucked for Eve. But we took it on the chin. Eve took it as an excuse to buy better pedals. 


D: Nice. And aside from that, how was the tour? 


C: The tour was great. The tour was awesome. We had fun. It was our first time working with a booking agent, which is a professionalising thing that we’re doing. We’d only done a couple of shows with them before. The first day of the tour was a Wednesday or Tuesday night in Hull and when I say there was no one there, I mean when we came on stage there was no one in the audience. There was one old lady drumming on the wall that was cool. Sam got a video of that. 


D: That sounds disheartening. 


C: Very disheartening. I just got very drunk on the rider. 


D: But to reframe it… bit satisfying to play in an empty room? 


C: Well a very fun thing – the venue had a thing where the gig was recorded. It was totally free – you scan a QR code before a set and it was totally professional. All the sound that went though the desk was recorded. That was the best thing to come from that gig. And that was one of the first times we listened back to Porcelain in a live setting. I remember on that tour in the car we listened back to that recording and used that recording to shape the eventual studio recording of the song. So that whole gig shaped what the song sounded like. We totally changed the structure based on that. 


D: I love that. In the 2024 interview we did, you said that every time you play your songs live, they change. 


C: 100% 


D: It’s nice to see that in practice, happening with something like recording where it’s so fixed, and can seem very unchangeable. 


C: I mean, I remember when you asked me in January when we played [Cowgate Block Party] in Edinburgh and you asked me for the lyrics… I improvise the lyrics. When we’re writing a song – and I still do this – I have a theme and some lines that I’ll do, but I’ll write the songs lyrically, live. I’ll do a kind-of improv thing. That for me is the easiest way – sometimes it’ll bomb and I’ll say something that doesn’t work and it’ll make it bad, but it really helps me eventually find what works and what doesn’t. Often I’ll go into the studio – a lot of the songs – the lyrics haven’t been finalised until the day I record them. 


D: One of the questions I actually wanted to ask you was about your ethos on lyrics – because from what you’ve just told me, that sounds like the lyrics aren’t so precious to you? 


C: I think it’s almost the opposite in that I really want to say the right thing. When I say I change them – the whole song doesn’t change, usually it’ll be a line of a verse I don’t like; that I’m trying to workshop. Like for example, Porcelain, the first verse was written exactly as it was the whole time, but it will be like, we’re still messing around the structure and the flow of the song… I want to know how the story progresses because that’s a big thing for me, especially with the new stuff we’re writing. I really think about the narrative of the song. This next stuff is very narrative driven. 


D: Why is that? 


C: Because that’s the songs I like listening to. The ones which are narrative driven. 


D: Drop some names


C: My favourite album of all time, and it always has been, is The Wall by Pink Floyd. My dream is to write a post-rock opera… to write an LP… a double LP that’s the story of something. 


D: Was From Leith to New York a narrative? 


C: Not all the way through, no. On the next EP – spoiler alert – there's going to be a new EP. We’re recording it in August. 


D: Can I spoil that? 


C: Yeah, you can spoil that. 


D: Exclusive!


C: Exclusive! But that won’t be a narrative either. I’m not going to make my narrative LP until I know what I want to write it on. Because I don’t want to waste it on something that is not very good. Not that I don’t think the next songs are very good. Our EP’s are organising in themes. On the last one, it was personal songs. The next one is going to be a lot about place. With Porcelain, as much as a different sound that it is, is a song about place. 


D: I think that’s what it’s rooted in! I mean, you can tell. Speaking of place – coming from Scotland and now playing a lot of shows in London – what was that transition like? 


C: The biggest transition hasn’t actually been the London scene, which I would argue isn’t as good as the North of England scene right now. I think some of the best music I’ve heard coming out of the UK is coming from the triangle around Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield. 


D: Nice, from who? 


C: Hollyhead, Normal Village, a band called Clive are excellent. University are fucking amazing. Imaginary husbands are another one. Some of these bands are so fucking good. I think all of the bands I just mentioned, other than Clive, are all playing Left of The Dial as well. They’re amazing bands, amazing musicians. That is the scene we – not break into – because we’re mates with these people – Holyhead especially are lovely, lovely people. We had them staying at ours last time they played in Glasgow. That to me is the most exciting music scene that I want to be a part of. 


D: It can be unbelievably London-centric.


C: But it’s where all the money and industry is. All those bands that I just mentioned, by the way, are going to London to try find industry support. Even though some are based in Manchester – which is a great music city – they’re still having to find platforms in London. A great band that we spoke to – you know Martial Arts? They’ve signed to a label in London. They’re a Manchester band. I chatted to them after the [Independant Music Society] dayfest, but they recorded at a studio in London because that’s where the industry is. 


D: In the interview we did before, you were talking about a loss of momentum in the Edinburgh scene due to Covid. Do you think that’s changed now? 



C: From talking to people it seems like the momentum has only gotten better. The Edinburgh scene is taking off right now. And it’s really cool to see. Insider Trading is from Edinburgh. That little baby is from over there. It’s really great to see Edinburgh have such great music coming out of it. 


D: When I was listening back to our previous interview, I asked you what was next, and you said the EP. At the time it was called ‘Big in Helsinki’


C: Did I? [laughs]. Oh my god, I remember that. 


D: You seem very attracted to this place idea. With the proper nouns in the songs, the EP titles… 


C: My Masters thesis was about place as well. I find it a very interesting prism to view things. It’s just something that’s been very apparent in my own upbringing as well. 


D: Is that geographic, conceptual space, or physical space, like this room?


C: Both, if I understand what you mean. Somewhere like Argyle Street and somewhere like Scotland, those are like real places but they also have an imaginary. It’s so interesting to explore. Scotland specifically is one that has been explored ad nauseum. But no one has really been able to capture it. The smaller, physical spaces hint at those bigger spaces as well. The pub we’re sitting at now has got a bunch of Scotland vs England posters, it’s Mackintosh-esque windows… so we infuse the bigger ideas of geography with an aesthetic, and then we infuse our aesthetics with the bigger ideas of geography. I find that a really interesting thing to explore through art. 


D: And you infuse that within your songs. 


C: Exactly. I can actually tell you, on the EP, there are two new songs: ‘Losing my language’ which is a song about highland clearances and the Scottish empire, and ‘the best band in Scotland’ which is far more about the smaller idea of space. The lyric is ‘I will never be in the best band in Scotland’, by the way. That song is about ambition, and also centering Glasgow or Scotland in general as a place in which to experience ambition. 


D: And I think you handle the balance between that really well – I mean, being direct about it, but also being tongue and cheek. That’s what I really found in Porcelain, again, back to the ‘what was your name again, beautiful?’... I was like… ‘ahhhh’… it’s clever and it’s intentional, which is what I really respect in songwriters. I’m excited to hear the narrative framework around the new EP too, it’s good to see it being crafted. 


D: Thanks so much Cameron. Any final closing thoughts? 


C: Listen to bandcamp more. Send us money! Buy our t-shirts! We’re touring in November! Come see us!



    You can find Insider trading on Bandcamp, Instagram and all streaming services