THIS WAY NORTH heads south

Cat Leahy and Leisha Jungalwalla met playing fordifferent bands at a festival in Canada, a friendship formed, and their band This Way North was born.

The duo has spent the past two years on the road bringing their larger than life sound to stages across Australia, Canada and New Zealand and now are readying to perform at this year’s Queenscliff Music Festival.

“I’ve been to the festival before but have never played. Cat (drummer/ vocalist) has played it before in a different band, it’s such an awesome festival. It’s always an eclectic lineup, you always know a few bands but discover new music which is really cool,” Leisha (guitarist/vocalist) said.

“I finished up secondary teaching two years ago to see what could happen if I played music full-time. Cat runs a booking agency while we’re on the road.

“We were putting in the hard yards last year (our first year full-time) and played over 120 live shows. This year it’s nice to see the growth in our fan base and the opportunities we’re getting.”

Leisha said their creation process varied from writing songs individually to collaborating on sounds together.

“Everyone always comments on how we don’t sound like just two people, we have a really big full sound. We’ve got a high energy live show and we just love playing music.

“You can see on our faces when we’re playing, our music is indie rock/alternative/pop sort of style.”

Leisha said the pair would be staying down for the November 23-25 weekend and was looking forward to checking out the other live acts.

“I think music is important because it can elicit so many different emotions from different people. Being an art medium, there are so many ways of creating music; creating different sounds, ranges and genres that touch people in different ways. I think people often don’t realise how much music is in their lives.”

For more information head to qmf.net.au.