Brad, Kye, Brett, Andrè and Danny have been honing their skills and travelling round the globe to record their debut album over the last year, even nabbing a song written by Justin Timberlake in the process.
Digital Spy spoke to bandmember Andrè about his experiences in the London bred group and his hopes for the future...
What were you doing before you joined 365?
"I was going to music college, studying music technology and performance at the Brit School - that was what I was doing before."
How did you all hook up and form the band?
"Kye and Brad have been friends for a long time, they live near each other. Me and Danny have been writing down in London for a little while - with different producers and stuff, then we kind of met through a singer/teacher, started writing together and decided it would be cool if we did the group thing."
How do you describe the sound of 365?
"I dunno really, I think it's something different...the best way to describe it is that it's just 365 - I think we've never had a group of guys come out with music sounding like this before, it's something a solo artist could do, it's funky, it's got loads of influences in there. Brad's into his old-school R 'n' B and Brett's into his jazz, so you can really hear that in the album."
It's an eclectic mix, then! You were signed by Innocent Records back in 2005, but what have you been doing since then?
"Since then we've just been writing and recording the album solidly for about a year, we went to Norway and Denmark, which was really cool, to work with some good producers. We've been writing - we moved in together and have been living together in the flat, working from there as well, having singing lessons and working on our routines. Making us the best we can be."
You say you went to Norway and Denmark for the album - what's been the best place you've recorded?
"Probably in London, actually, just round the corner in Parson's Green, there's a studio called The Matrix, and it's like huge, and we were there, we met Aleesha from Misteeq. Loads of people were there, the All Saints were in there one day...we've got a guy called Johnny Douglas, who produces for All Saints, he's done Whitney Houston, George Michael, and working for him was wicked. He's such a cool guy and there was a good vibe around the studio working with him."
Who came up with the name 365?
"It was kind of a collective thing. Finding a name is so hard, and we all kind of came to the decision that unless you have 100,000 sales behind you the name doesn't really sound that great anyway. It's like 365 days in a year - it was a year from when we got together to when we got our deal, so it was to mark that as well."
Did you try out loads of different names?
"We were going through loads of different ones, and we were trying to live with them for a week or whatever. We just thought, no, that's not the one. 365 - it was about the year thing, and we just knew it was right. We just stuck with it."
What was the weirdest name you came up with?
"I don't even know...Method 21, someone came up with Method 21 and we were like...no, CCTV! One that the label came up with - and were like WHAT? No no no no no."
What was going through your head last month when you were waiting to go on stage last month at Wembley Arena for that Girl Guides concert?
"I couldn't get out of my mind how good Aleesha looked, because she was right before us! I was looking and then I realised we were about to go out on stage - I was so excited, the nerves didn't really come till I stepped on and I thought how many people there were! It was excitement more than anything."
How did the gig go?
"It was wicked. They were going crazy - I think cos they were Girl Guides at Wembley, they were up for having a laugh - the audience that we want, basically! Fun, just having a little bit of fun with them."
For your upcoming album, do you as a band do much in terms of songwriting?
"Yeah, the majority of the album we've written all together. That's what we've been doing over the past year, writing with different producers. We've got a song on there written by Justin Timberlake called 'We Should Be Dancing', and when you hear a song you haven't written yourself, you have to decide whether it sums up the group, and that just summed us up perfectly - it was our sound, and fitted in really well with everything else we'd written."
How did you sort that out with Justin?
"Our manager found the song. She's just gone into publishing, she found the song, played it and we fell in love with it straight away!"
Have you had any feedback from him?
"No, not yet, we're waiting to meet him so we could ask him. That would be wicked."
Is the album totally completed?
"More or less, yeah, I think we've just got to decide what songs we want on, what orders and stuff."
When's it released?
"I think it's about February, March time next year."
There have been quite a few boybands around in recent years - do you like the term?
"I don't mind it, because I think boyband for me draws back to the good days of Take That and E17, those guys who were doing it really well, like Jackson Five and stuff, that's a boyband to me. The newer stuff, where they're trying to take it back there, but not doing it as successfully...I'm not interested in that, it's their problem..."
What makes 365 stand out?
"We're all totally different. There's five totally different personalities, and I think that's the problem with some of the boybands that have come before us - they all look like the same person. There's no variation, nothing exciting, you don't get a feel for any of their personalities, whereas with us you can feel we're totally different, we look totally different, behave totally differently...but it works, that's what makes us different."
A lot of bands are told by their manager what to wear, what to do - you're not like that, are you?
"Not at all. We just look like a group of friends, and I think that could be the reason why it works - we're a group of friends who happened to be doing music together."
Do you have any role models within the music industry?
"All of us look up to Michael Jackson a lot, he's the king of pop, so we all look up to him."
You said you took a year trying to get a record deal. Did you ever consider going down the whole X Factor, Pop Idol route?
"No, we watched it on television and we thought it made things look too easy. We work really hard, and we chose the name 365 to mark that. We still don't want to take the easy route."
If you could pick any singer for 365 to work with, apart from Michael Jackson, who would it be?
"Haha, apart from Michael Jackson? Pussycat Dolls, I think, there's one in there for each of us, I think!"
How did you find being followed around by a camera crew from This Morning recently?
"It was really good, they're really nice. They've been following us for a couple of months now, or they are. It was really good. You know MTV Diary and all that, it was cool, it was nice to have them there. The people who do it are really nice, too."
Apart from interviews, what are you doing to promote the new single?
"We were on This Morning, we've got a couple of TV appearances coming up soon - I'm not sure what because I haven't looked at my diary, just seen loads of under-18 gigs, turning on a few Christmas lights. Tomorrow we're in Watford doing a gig there, and just loads of gigs, trying to get ourselves out and about, spread some word about the single and stuff."
What's the single about?
"It's just about meeting a girl, relationships, seeing her in a club, walking up to her, talking to her, the usual girl-on-boy situation, but done in a cool way. It's kind of a sexy song, and that's what we wanted to portray in the video as well."
You've got the single and album coming out. What are your long-term plans?
"The second single and the album...after that, we're just hoping we'll get another album out. We'd love to do a tour, that's one thing we really want to do. We've got so many ideas through watching Michael Jackson tours and stuff like that - we really want to put it into practice on tour. All of us know that our main thing is that we want to be as big as we can, get the group as far as we can. That's why we respect people like Westlife who have managed to keep it going for so long."
Thanks for chatting, Andre!
