There's something about Tails on Fire that makes you want to scream. Whether it's during one of their live shows or after you've been subjected to a battery of their bad jokes, depends on where you've met them. "I was actually hoping for a girl vocalist this time," says TT Sriram, previously of Skrat and Blacklisted fame, who plays bass guitar. "Someone with the kind of rock 'n' roll stage presence that you get with Alison Mosshart from The Kills," he explains dreamily. No such luck though, for even this time the foursome are all male. Despite being one of the newest bands in the city’s musical circuit, there's nothing new about them. Chances are, you would've seen most of them, if you've been for any concert in Chennai over the past couple of years. Together since July this year, the group is all of five shows old, but has already won first place at a recent talent hunt for bands. Their guitarist, Jitesh Dharmaraj, also an amateur racer, returned from a stint at the race-track with multiple fractures — only to be "dutifully" nursed back to health by "good friend", Karan Nair. He reveals sardonically, “Karan and I had been talking about forming a band for a while. After all that (nursing), I thought,'I owe him a band.'”Thus with that touching tale began Tails on Fire. However, when one finds out that the group was initially slated to be named Monkey Messiah, it is evident that they're more border-line crazy than sentimental. Also in the group, is Jitesh’s relatively slower bike-riding brother Ritesh, a familiar face from metal outfit, Nerverek, who appears to be the most soft spoken of the lot.It turns out Monkey Messiah transitioned to be one of their first compositions. “It’s about this monkey who comes from an alien planet to earth to chill,” explains Jitesh, quite seriously. “Yes, but then humans think it wants to take over, and then they want to get rid of it,” TT finishes the story. Although, their genre seems to spell a chaos of influences — Brit punk, metal, 80s rock and even some smooth jazz to bind it all together, the band is unified on one thought. "We wanted to have a band that didn't stay put in one place when on stage," says TT. "That's why if you see us on stage, we're always jumping," Jitesh adds. Ask them about memorable stage antics and TT recalls, “We did this ‘Freeze’ once, all of a sudden in the middle of this extremely fast-moving song, while performing at a mall.” They also claim to be free flowing with regional twists on stage. Once they even played an entire medley of popular Kollywood hits, with O podu-Urvasi-Chikku Bukku completely impromptu. A must listen is their upbeat fix of romantic troubles, simply called, Move.While watching several YouTube videos of Tails on Fire to get a feel of their sound, it is difficult to miss one song which stands out in particular. Unlike the rest, this is TT Sriram going solo with an acoustic guitar for company. The song is curiously titled, Rejected - A True Story of Arpit Pandey. Evidently, it's a prank on someone he knows, complete with a fun storyline in the lyrics and mimed expressions for the layman who hasn't met him. Halfway through, it gets you to hum along. "Arpit didn't really mind," confirms TT. "In fact, he's the one who uploaded it on YouTube one night without telling anybody." He adds, "I woke up the next morning and there were 50 hits, so I figured out we had something there."
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