It was within the walls of sixth form college that Holly-Anne Hull, Lauren Byrne, and Charlotte Steele first met at age 16, initially hearing about each other as “the singer” of their different classes. Despite Holly’s protestations to the contrary, Lauren and Charlotte tell me that at the start they “were all scared of each other,” spending some time “really scoping each other out,” before skipping lessons “to sing silly covers” together. It’s been 11 years now, and they haven’t looked back.

The trio sing a blend of country and pop music, springing into the public eye after appearing on The Voice in 2019, when Jennifer Hudson threw her shoe at them – a sign of appreciation, indicating they have a lot of ‘soul’. Charlotte tells me how they loved that year of filming because it gave them “a flavour” of what their lives could be, but, as Lauren says, they then “just crawled back off to [their] full-time jobs”. If you’d said to them then, or even a year ago, that they’d be going on a UK tour in November, “we would have been like ‘absolutely not’”.

“We were so bored and so unemployed, and we were like, we may as well make the most of this time”

“We’ve always pretended and been in denial that it could happen […] it’s always just been a silly thing we’d say in our group chat,” Holly explains – only this dream did make it out of the group chat. Lockdown was the turning point: “We were so bored and so unemployed, and we were like, we may as well make the most of this time.” They spent many eight-hour days standing in freezing cold car parks recording videos of them singing to post online. “It was so silly, but we had the best time,” Lauren says, noting how they also “started to get a social media following” during this time. The trio now have over 500k followers on TikTok, with Charlotte calling this “a game changer”.

After performing their first headline gig in February 2023 to a room full of people singing along, they realised, “we have to do this […] we have to give it a go”. “It was now or never, as cringey as that sounds,” Holly says. They went back and forth for months before taking the plunge, quitting their jobs to commit to the band full-time. “We really loved the jobs we were in,” Lauren tells me, “and we’d worked incredibly hard to get to the places that we were in career-wise, so it was a really big decision to leave those jobs”. Ultimately, supporting Billy Joel and Natasha Bedingfield at British Summertime in Hyde Park last year, where they shared a trailer with Joe Jonas and walked out to thousands of fans singing their songs, was “the nail in the coffin,” pushing them to take that leap of faith.

“Honestly it felt like a movie. It just felt like we were three characters”

Their first act as a full-time band? A trip to Nashville, the Vegas of country music. When I ask about the trip, they immediately respond: “We loved it”. Nearly everyone in Nashville is connected to the music industry, so “it just feels like every conversation that you have with anyone could change your career”. This was certainly the case when they made a 48-hour trip to LA from Nashville to appear on The Jennifer Hudson Show. A chance encounter with a former Warner Brothers employee led to them getting in his car (after properly checking him out) to embark on a whistle-stop tour of the city, visiting the Hollywood sign, buying “old costumes from different movies,” and receiving impromptu media training from him. “It was a really special day,” they say: “Honestly it felt like a movie. It just felt like we were three characters”.

Over the years, they’ve found their way, and it’s evident from their videos online and interactions with one another during our call that their friendship has been a huge part of this. “We’re more like sisters now,” Holly says, pinning the band’s success on the fact that they “prioritise the friendship over the business side of it”. Not only have they cultivated a strong bond between themselves, but they also seek to create a community of empowered women: “It’s one of the most wonderful things in the world to inspire young women, or make them believe it doesn’t have to be a competition.” As women, we’ve been brought up to think “there’s not enough room, and it’s just bollocks”.

With this communal spirit in mind, they’ve created a ‘Girls’ Bathroom’ comment section on their Instagram page to help people find concert buddies ahead of their tour. “It’s honestly the loveliest comments section,” Holly tells me: “Sometimes when we’re down, we literally just sit and read it all and make sure everyone has a buddy.”

They still can’t quite believe the tour is happening, but it feels like the start of a very exciting future for the trio. The big dream? “World domination”. They joke, but behind the laughter, there’s a real drive to keep making music and ticking tour locations off their bucket list. “I do have a dream for us that we are out on the road and touring and seeing amazing places. It’d be incredible to tour Europe, it’d be amazing to tour America,” Lauren says, with Charlotte quickly adding Australia and Asia to the list. The UK, then, is just the start: world domination it is.