The Scholars say they’re ‘five scholarly gents who united through an appreciation of music in all its forms’ and play tonight at The Jericho 
with Manpoints.
1.What do you think you sound like?
As Colin Mac has pointed out on the site, our sound is fairly similar to Editors, Interpol and some of our favourite New Wave bands from the eighties. While the post-post punk and White Lies-esque production gloss is there, we are moving more towards a more eighties sound and are planning to buy a load of new gear and synths to push our keyboard love.
2. What do you do when you’re not making music?
We study full time and have fun whenever we can – this is partly an answer to question 4.
3. Recommend us a good band or album and tell us what’s good about it.
We’re big fans of Glaswegian alt rock outfit The Cinematics and their debut album A Strange Education. The band have been unfortunate enough to be dwarfed by Franz Ferdinand due to their location when they are, however, far superior. The album’s honest attitude towards genuinely good tunes makes their debut charming, endearing and definitely worth a look: it shames the superficiality of more exposed acts.
4. Where did you get your band name from?
We’ve always found the process of choosing a band name interesting and boring at the same time – while it’s completely arbitary on the one hand, it is of course one of the most important elements which goes towards presenting an overall image. While ‘The Scholars’ isn’t exactly groundbreaking, we feel it demonstrates that we are just a bunch of normal kids who have to study first and rock out second. We’re also very proud to represent Oxfordshire when we play away from home and our ‘scholarly’ tag works well with the classic image of an academic Oxfordian to give us what we hope is our bookish appeal.
5. What do you like and dislike about Oxford and its music?
We love the warmth and locality of Oxford and how it is a thirving community in its diversity. We find that we’re always welcomed to the city so warmly and it doesn’t present the daunting challenges that Birmingham does, for example.
On the down side, however, we sometimes feel that the city is very sheltered and because the music scene is so hectic, it is difficult to pick up on big audiences and sometimes opportunities seem few and far between.