Uk Country darlings!
UK country sensations First Time Flyers will release their debut album, ‘Bound To Break’ in September and take it on the road that month including a date at Bristol's Thekla on Saturday 27 September 2025.
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ABOUT FIRST TIME FLYERS
When four friends with wildly different journeys - from the West End stage to Nashville song circles - decided to take a leap together, they became First Time Flyers: a harmony-driven, heart-led UK country band who are fast becoming one of the genre’s most exciting new names. Unusually made up of four lead singers and multi-instrumentalists, they are as capable behind the scenes as on stage - writing, producing, designing and releasing all their own music. Their sound is rooted in country but pulls in pop, rock, and singer-songwriter sensibilities.
Their debut album, ‘Bound To Break’, is out September 12, 2025 and is already being called a defining moment in UK country. The title refers to the idea that sometimes we have to break - break up, break down, break rules - in order to break through. It’s a raw and resonant look at the defining moments in our lives: the jumps we take, the ones we don’t, the ones we miss and the courage it takes to start all over again.
‘Bound To Break’ is more than a debut - it’s a document of survival, transformation, and truth. Across 15 tracks, the band explores what happens when life cracks you wide open: the heartbreaks, the healing, and all the growing pains in-between. It’s country music at its core - storytelling steeped in soul, honesty, and four-part harmony - but with a modern, cinematic edge and the band’s own British roots woven throughout.
Tracks such as ‘Jump’ (a BBC Radio 2 playlist hit) and its emotionally honest counterpoint ‘Out of Your Mind’ came from deeply personal conversations within the band about past relationships, identity and choosing love against the odds. One tells the story of Vicki’s journey finding true love, while the other mirrors Poppy’s mistakes in love along the way. The quietly powerful ‘Before the Wind Changes’ tackles Poppy’s experience of pushing through trauma too quickly, like skating on thin ice until eventually it cracks from underneath you. ‘Stay’, premiered on Vernon Kay’s BBC Radio 2 show, where Vicki & Tim went head to head on Ten to the Top! ‘Stay’ is a poignant declaration about the emotional tug-of-war when you love someone with a complex past. ‘Looking Back Now’ was written with friend Jeff Cohen (Sugarland, The Shires) the day after their first live gig at C2C. The band and Jeff went for lunch and Poppy was singing the recording the chorus idea into her phone. The next day, they wrote it. The song was inspired by the bittersweet realisation that you only get one ‘first’ and it encourages the listener to stop, breath & savour every second. ‘First Dance’ was written just days before Jakes wedding & ‘Gold’ captures the feeling Tim felt when he bravely re-entered band life, but this time with his best friends.
“Every track is stitched from our real lives” says Poppy. “The love, the loss, the laughter, the things we said and the things we wish we’d said.”
The album is self-produced by Tim, capturing the spirit of the band’s live sound - raw but refined, spontaneous but thoughtful. The trust between them runs deep, and you hear it in every harmony.
“We are so pumped to take this album out on the road in September” says Jake, who has recently become a first time father.
“And what’s so great is after we get back from this tour we will have hundreds of new stories to get writing” says Vicki.