Wet Leg’s Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers
(Picture: WET LEG PHOTOGRAPHED BY LUC COIFFAIT FOR ES MAGAZINE)The duo behind one of the UK’s hottest bands have spoken of their “unintentional” rise to fame which started with a trip on a Ferris wheel.
Wet Leg’s Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers, from the Isle of Wight, first met as teenagers in college but were in their twenties when the band got together at a festival.
Teasdale tells ES Magazine: “We’d seen this Ferris wheel all weekend but never thought to get on it and now all of a sudden we were on it. It was very mystical. We were looking into the night sky. It felt like anything was possible.”
They started the band — named after an Isle of Wight nickname for people from the mainland — while holding down nine-to-five jobs. They hoped they might get a few gigs at festivals which would save them paying for “expensive” tickets to get into them.
But then their debut, Chaise Longue, got almost seven million streams and they toured Europe and the US, counting names including Iggy Pop and Florence Welch among their fans.
An album is due out this month but Teasdale said it was only when playing to a crowd at the Latitude Festival that they first realised they had made it.
Her bandmate said: “We didn’t have any of that as a goal or an agenda. We just really wanted to have fun.”
Read the full interview in ES Magazine out on Thursday and Friday.
