Only the Poets Tickets

Only The Poets are part of Ticketmaster New Music’s Breakthrough 2024 list – our pick of the hottest new artists you must see live in 2024.

Reading Festival looms large over the locals. Lead singer and guitarist Tommy Longhurst – who hails from Woodley, four miles down the road from Reading’s main gate – was a wide-eyed solo artist as a youngster, which changed after a fateful weekend at the festival. Inspired by the line-up, he wanted in.

Linking up with bassist Andy “Roo” Burge after the dissolution of his then-band, the pair started writing music together whilst searching for two extra players. A revolving door of names came and went, until they were suggested drummer Marcus Yates and guitarist Jarred Philips of the band Pixel Fix – the latter later replaced by Clem Cherry – through their mutual manager Sam Jackson. Making use of their instant chemistry, drawing from shared influences in Blur, Oasis, and The Cure, it wasn’t long before Only The Poets released their debut single, ‘Ceasefire’, in 2017.

A string of singles followed, the likes of ‘Emotional’ and ‘Dead Young’ earning the Reading four-piece a word-of-mouth reputation for being one of Britain’s brightest new bands, resulting in a show at London’s Scala. By the time they released 2020 single ‘Waking In The Dark’, they’d stirred enough attention that the song accrued over 100,000 listens within its first week. 

And it didn’t go unnoticed. Former One Direction star Louis Tomlinson invited Only The Poets to support him on his upcoming tour in 2020, only to be postponed by the pandemic. But the boys’ break-neck pace of writing, recording, and touring only let up slightly, with self-released debut EP Speak Out coming out that year. When reality resumed, so did the tour with Tomlinson, just in time for the band to release their follow-up EP, Our Time.

Hitting the road for their own headline tour, the band also supported Lewis Capaldi and Bastille, capping off their run of dates with a sold-out show at O2 Shepherds Bush Empire, even performing at major festivals such as Lollapalooza Paris and Reading Festival – back where it all started. Signing with Virgin EMI Records in 2023, Only The Poets made a breakthrough that year with the release of six singles, which included ‘Even Hell’ and ‘JUMP!’.

“We’re just four lads who love music, so we just wanted people to be able to escape and enjoy the beauty of music with us”, said lead singer Tommy Longhurst, and Only The Poets’ infectious brand of anthemic indie pop does exactly that. It invites every single one of us to sing along with them.