How are you and what have you been up to recently?
I am home writing at the moment and last night I cooked jerk chicken. Tonight I am going bowling with friends. Heaven!

You grew up in Leeds. What was that like for a budding musician?
It was good in that the music scene is big enough to get lost in but not so huge as to be intimidating. The most inspiring thing when I was a teenager in Leeds was to see how people created these DIY events with their friends that were the most fun I had ever been exposed to.

What is the best concert you have ever been to?
I saw PJ Harvey do an acoustic gig with about 300 people in the room in this really old theatre in London, it was amazing to be able to hear her voice unamplified as well as over the PA.

If you could have been a musician in any era when would it be?
I don’t want to wish my life away! I love being a musician in the post-internet age as it means we can communicate with people so directly.

What’s the best gig you have ever performed?
I had a lot of fun at the Wichita Christmas Party in London this year, though I was dressed as a Christmas tree and I think it’s scientifically impossible to have a bad evening in that outfit.

Is there any particular venue you’d like to play?
Dear NASA, Sky Larkin would like to play a gig in the international space station so we can sing about the world whilst seeing it in totality from space. What would it be like to play a drum kit at zero gravity? Would it reverberate in some endless way? So many questions that only you can help us answer. Kind regards, Katie Harkin of Sky Larkin.

Have you ever played a show when everything has gone completely wrong?
Yes. At Swn festival, which is an amazing festival in Wales that I was very excited about playing, all our gear broke. In freakish ways too – Nestor’s cymbal stand broke and fell on Doug’s bass lead and cut it clean in two. Oh what a night. Sorry Swn.

What was your first musical instrument?
The piano I think, though technically I had a yellow plastic guitar with plastic strings that I used to sit on the swings in my parent’s garden and play aimlessly.

What books have you read and films have you seen recently?
Last night I watched a documentary about Slavov Zizek called The Reality of the Virtual, which still has my mind spinning. I’m reading a book about Hélio Oiticica called The Body of Colour.

Do you prefer playing live or recording in the studio?
I like the studio environment as I feel very at home there, and I don’t always feel at home onstage. The studio experience is very fleeting though, once it’s down it’s down, so touring lets us move around inside what we’ve already written. Plus we get to meet lots of cool cats and eat tasty foods.

Any burning ambitions?
To read more on tour, I have piled all the books I want to read or re-read this year in a prominent place in my house. I could forget about them on the bookshelves but now they tower up so I can’t shirk my resolution.