Spinors: "We Take A Bit From Every Era!"

We recently had the opportunity to speak with the enigmatic Spinors about all things 'You Loved The Cage'.

1. What is the main story behind “You Loved the Cage”?

It’s the story of a couple who get each other through a really dark period. The cage is a metaphor for that place: substance abuse, toxic behaviour and circumstances so harsh that they had almost nothing but each other. Their love was rooted in that situation and in the need to survive it. Once things change and one of them gets out, the love that seemed so solid fades away. The song tells it from the point of view of the one left behind, who feels used and betrayed after giving everything. The video widens the picture. We see that both of them were caught up in addiction. He manages to turn his life around and chooses to move on, while she’s still trapped. So the person who sounds like the victim in the lyrics isn’t necessarily the whole truth. And there’s one last twist at the very end that makes you question whether he’s really as free as he thinks.

2. The song uses a “cage” as a metaphor. What does the cage represent to you?

The cage stands for anything that keeps you locked in a destructive pattern. That could be addiction, a toxic relationship, or simply circumstances so tough that you can’t see a way out. I wanted to push the imagery as far as it would go, so cages and chains felt like the natural choice. They give you that sense of confinement and claustrophobia straight away. The interesting part for me is that the cage is also what holds the couple together. Their love grew out of those circumstances, so once the bars come down, the reason they were together starts to disappear too. That’s the bittersweet idea behind the line “you loved the cage until you wanted more”.

3. Are the lyrics based on real personal experiences, or is it a fictional story?

It’s drawn from a mix of things I’ve lived through over the years. It’s not about one particular person or one specific moment, but it does reflect me, caught up in certain situations from my past. Fiction is the tool that lets me talk about all of that from a safe distance. Once you turn real experiences into a story with characters, cages and chains, you can explore them artistically and say much more than you could by simply recounting what happened. That distance also means listeners can step into the story and make it their own.

4. We hear a mix of 60s garage rock, grunge, and post-punk in your sound. Who are your biggest musical influences?

We take a bit from every era, and I love that people hear different things in our music. The riffs owe a lot to the 70s, and the big, catchy choruses come from the 90s. If I had to name a few bands, Alice in Chains, Black Sabbath and Pantera would definitely be on the list, among many others. That said, I don’t think we sound too much like any single band, and we don’t tie ourselves to one genre. If an idea from somewhere else in rock or metal helps tell the story of a song, we use it.

5. The guitar solo uses Arabic scales. How did you decide to bring that unique sound into a rock track?

When I write, I look for whatever tools best capture the feeling behind the song, and then I try to make them fit together as one piece. This song has two emotional sides. The anger comes through in the heavy riffs and the rough vocals. But there’s also a lot of sadness, especially in the verses and the solo. Arabic scales have this quality of nostalgia and ambiguity that suited that moment perfectly. It feels like longing, but you’re never quite sure where it’s heading, which is exactly how the narrator feels.

6. How does this single compare to your previous music, like “Choose to Believe”?

They’re completely different songs, not just in their structure but in their whole intention. I always start writing from a feeling, an emotion or a situation, and then I build the music and the lyrics around that concept. Because these two songs come from such different places, they don’t share much at all. “Choose to Believe” is social criticism. It’s about how people are manipulated in the age of post-truth, so the vocals are more aggressive to express that frustration and discontent. “You Loved the Cage” is a heartbreak story told by someone who’s right in the middle of it, so it carries a much heavier emotional weight. The tools I used for each one have absolutely nothing in common, because each song needed its own language.

7. The music video (above) has a big twist about who is actually trapped. What message did you want to send with that ending?

I didn’t want to hand anyone a tidy moral. The lyrics make it sound like a simple story of abandonment, but the video shows that both of them were living a self-destructive life. He chooses to get out and she relapses, so suddenly it’s not obvious who the villain is. Then at the very end he gets involved with his therapist, which suggests the destructive patterns are still there, just in a different shape. So the question becomes: who’s actually free? That links to the name of the band. A spinor stays undefined until it’s observed, and I like the idea that the meaning of the story only settles when each viewer watches it and brings their own experience to it. I have my own view, of course, but I’d rather keep it open and let people debate it.

8. You filmed in amazing places like Lincoln Cathedral and St Dunstan in the East. Why did you choose those locations?

Steampunk is closely tied to Victorian and Baroque aesthetics, so we needed places with that sort of history in the stones. About a week before filming, I went to Asylum in Lincoln, one of the biggest steampunk events in the UK, and I completely fell in love with the city. I changed the plans so we could film around Lincoln Cathedral and the Drill Hall, and I invited people from the local community to take part. That turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve made, because they were wonderful. St Dunstan in the East, here in London, is a bombed-out church covered in greenery, and it has this eerie, fantasy-book feel that suited the darker scenes. We had to shoot there very early in the morning to avoid the crowds, and at one point, during a fight scene, we had to explain to people watching from a window that it was all for a music video!

9. People describe your style as “steampunk anarchist.” How did you come up with that look?

Steampunk has been part of Spinors from the very beginning. I’ve always loved it, and I believe a band should use every tool it has, including the look, the videos and the performance, to tell its stories. On stage we wear Victorian outfits with Baroque and fantasy touches, and I play a steampunk guitar. To be honest, though, I don’t really see myself as an anarchist. I’m actually a very structured person, and I believe in strong leadership. What I am is deeply disillusioned with the system. I think noble causes are often hijacked to do politics and manipulate the masses. After decades of poor education and a reward system worn down by digital dopamine, a lot of people end up following whichever slogan comes with a friendly face and tells them what they already wanted to hear, without being able to tell an empty slogan from real policies and actions. That’s partly why steampunk fits so well. It’s an alternative universe where digital technology never took over. There are no smartphones, computers or robots, only automatons, steam engines and mechanical inventions. In a world shaped by screens and endless scrolling, imagining one that took a different path feels like a statement in itself. So if there’s any rebellion in what we do, it’s against that, not against order itself.

10. What is the next big goal for Spinors now that this single is out?

The plan is to keep touring as much as we can. We’ve got shows around the UK and then Europe, Canada, Japan and Australia, which I’m really excited about. On the music side, we’ve already recorded two more songs, and we want to turn both of them into music videos during the first quarter of next year. In the meantime, we’ll be sharing extra footage from “You Loved the Cage” on social media to expand the story, because we filmed far more than fit into four minutes. I’d also love to release an English version of a song dedicated to my cat Glottis. He was my companion for most of my life and appeared in many of my earlier projects. The original video already had a steampunk aesthetic, so it would fit perfectly into the world of Spinors.