Easy Life “don’t have a band name or a band, but we’re still here”

Easy Life frontman Murray Matravers has spoken to NME about the upside of their legal battle with EasyGroup, current situation and plans for the future.

• READ MORE: Easy Life live in London: an emotional farewell amid legal drama

Last year saw saw Easy Life play their final show under that name, having conceded defeat in a legal battle over the moniker against easyGroup (the brand owner of easyJet airlines) and that “sadly, it seems that justice is only available to those who can afford it” without “the funds to access a fair trial in the High Court.”

Despite this, frontman Murray Matravers said that 2023 was “a good year in general” – as he told us at the recent Featured Artists Coalition AGM, supported by NME.

“We had our first ever profitable festival season after six years of doing it, so we worked that out,” he told the NME-chaired panel. “We’re still here. We don’t have a band name or a band, but we’re still doing it.”

He continued: “To be honest, [the EasyJet legal battle] has actually been a good thing. We’ve reached people that would never have heard of our band before. We reached older people that read broadsheet newspapers still. It’s not a bad thing. I’m trying to see it like that, otherwise I’d break down and cry.”

The frontman explained how the band had enjoyed “a lot of good will [from] your everyday newsreader” as well as “the music community” and the display of “a show of strength from artists too”, but revealed that one outcome from the legal battle was that “legally I can’t use our social media any more”.

“However, he detailed how that had proven “quite nice after years of making terrible, terrible content and posting it out there with a gun to my head”.

• READ MORE: Artists on the challenges of 2023 and hopes for 2024: “I just want to see us getting paid for selling records”

Since their last London show, the band have been enjoying a break with Matravers “getting back into why I got into this in the first place with writing, recording and reconnecting with the stuff that I like doing”.

“I’m in a good place and I’m looking forward to next year,” he said. “We’re not going to play any festivals and I doubt we’re going to do much touring. That sounds negative, but it’s a welcome break from the chaos of relentless touring.”

In the FAC AGM panel – which also featured Sam Duckworth of Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly, along with rising and acclaimed singer-songwriters LVRA and Cherise –  Matravers spoke out about the prohibitive and increasing costs of touring for artists, having cancelled their North American tour last year along with European dates. With this in mind, he said that the band were looking at a brand new outlooking on playing live.

“I’m actually talking with the band and management about our next tour, and we’re having to think about it in a whole new way because touring just isn’t financially sustainable at all,” he explained.

Check what else Matravers and the rest of the panel had to say about the challenges artists faced in 2023 and what they want to see change in the year ahead here. 

While the band initially hit back at EasyGroup, who decscribed them as “brand thieves”, October saw them announce that they would be surrendering their band name due to a lack of finances to pursue it in court.

The NME Award-winning Leicester band have been active since 2017, and released two acclaimed albums – 2022’s ‘Maybe In Another Life‘ and 2021 debut ‘Life’s A Beach‘.

Ahead of the band’s London farewell gig, which also saw the sold-out KOKO crowd lead chants of “fuck EasyJet“, Easy Life also released their final single under the moniker with ‘Trust Exercises’.