Who are you and what is your role in the band?
My name is Robert Cosgrove, I’m the vocalist of Sleep Signals.
How did the band get started?
The band got started around 2014 in the Minneapolis area and we started touring in 2015. We went through a number of member changes and shifted some people around in the band before we found the right group of guys. We’ve been hitting the road hard ever since!
Who are your influences and how do they play a role in your sound?
We all have a pretty wide variety of influences. All of us tend to share a pretty common background in some sort of hardcore or metalcore roots though and it definitely plays a role in our sound.
What has been your most meaningful experience being in this band so far?
I think hitting the road always feels like one of the big ones. It’s always a new experience each tour and the touring aspect of being in a band is why we do it in the first place. For us, it’s all about getting out and meeting new people and making new friends. Every time we release a new album it’s pretty exciting, too. Each album is the result of so much work and it’s really cool to see the growth and development between each one we put out, so it’s definitely very meaningful for us.
Favorite memory from a show you’ve played or a place you’ve travelled?
We always try to make little stops whenever we have the opportunity while we’re on tour. Between shows, radio, and everything else, it’s difficult to find the time to do that, but we always try our best. Some of the most interesting places we’ve stopped on tour were The Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and Ojinaga, Mexico. We stopped and saw The Marfa Lights once too, that definitely pretty memorable! Show-wise, Northern Invasion was pretty special for us. it was the first major festival we’d played and it was something that will stick with us forever.
What do you hope to accomplish with your music?
We try to write pretty positive music and we want our music to speak to people. We leave interpretation open in a lot of our lyrics and we hope they can mean different things to different people. We always hope to reach people in some positive way. Whenever we get the opportunity, we love playing benefits and stuff like that so we can use our music as a platform to make a positive impact on someone’s lives. At the end of the day, if we can accomplish that, we feel like we’ve been successful. At some point we’d love to play sold-out shows every night in huge venues, but we know the work that is involved to get to that point and we know how difficult it is to reach that level. We feel we’re accomplishing our goals though as long as we continue to grow.
Something about you that no one knows?
The band is actually a false front for us to create an unstoppable basketball team. There is a reason we’re a 5-piece… The problem is we’re not very good at basketball and we’re actually quite stoppable… For real though, we have been known to play some basketball on tour.
What is next for the band?
We’re about to hit the road with our friends The Scars Heal in Time for the entire month of September and then we’ll be heading back out on the road again for all of November into the first third of December. Our new record drops on 9/8 and we have a new music video dropping right around the same time. 2018 is already looking VERY busy for us!
Anything else you want to add?
Only please come out to a show, come up to us and introduce yourself, and get to know us! We love meeting new people and it makes all the hard work that comes along with touring worth it for us. We want to make friends and get to know all of you!
