With The Kowloons selling out their latest Liverpool headline show and releasing new EP Hallelujah, Sam Millne caught up with drummer Ant Ng.
Following the launch of their excellent four-track EP, Hallelujah, we spoke to The Kowloons about their songwriting, inspirations, the meaning behind the band’s name and their next steps.
When and how did The Kowloons start?
The essence of the band probably started when Ste (frontman) and I were kids.
Obviously we weren’t called The Kowloons at that point, but we were writing tunes at the age of 10, so the spirit of what the band has become today has always been there.
Being twins, we had this connection that seemed to cross over into anything we did. We could tell where the other one was on a footy pitch without having to look up and we had musical chemistry when we started to jam together.
During lockdown we bought a Mac and recording software; we had a few little song ideas and wanted to start making some demos.
We were obsessed with The La’s’ unreleased material around this time, specifically the song Fishing Net, so we decided to record a version of our own just for the fun of it really – sometimes you have to dissect a song you like to really know the mechanics of what makes it so good.
A few months go by and we decide we want to start playing live and getting the tunes out there, so we put some feelers out on social media and Mason (lead guitar) was one of the ones who got back to us.
He came round to have a jam, got on well with him and just played loads of The Beatles’ tunes.
That was around 2022, so in between Mason joining and present day, we went through a few lineup changes.
Bobby (bass) joined in 2025. He knew of Mason through seeing him at Real People gigs, and since he’s joined we haven’t looked back.
It feels like we’ve got this little gang and it is us vs. the world.
For whom do you make music?
Really, we make music for ourselves. We don’t think about or try to anticipate what people might want or expect from us.
I think from the start we’ve been careful about not boxing ourselves into a corner in terms of our sound and genre. We don’t want to be that band where every song sounds the same and dead formulaic.
To us, trying new things, new approaches in the studio, new ways of songwriting is what keeps it exciting.
We quite like the Britpop label as it’s a bit vague but seems to fit us nicely.
Who are your inspirations in music?
There are too many to name!
Since we were kids, we have always been Beatles fanatics – they are the
holy grail, our musical universe orbits around them.
We’re like magpies really. We take and learn things from artists we like, harmonies from The Beach Boys and the Bee Gees, succinct song structure and
acoustic guitar-led rhythm from The La’s, soft-to-loud dynamics from Pixies, lyrical themes from The Kinks.
Early on, you released a cover of The La’s’ unreleased track, Fishing Net, which is still your most-streamed song.
How do you think this has impacted your growth?
It definitely impacted us positively. It gave us a little boost when we first started out and helped to give us a bit of traction.
It wasn’t any kind of marketing stunt from us, we just have a genuine love for The La’s and that track specifically was one we would just jam endlessly.
We’ve taken it out of the live set nowadays, but it’s got a special place in our hearts.
Can you explain your name, The Kowloons?
The name comes from our grandad, who moved from Hong Kong to Liverpool in the 1960s.
He was from a city in Hong Kong called Kowloon, specifically a small village called Ngau Chi Wan.
When we first started the band, it just seemed like the perfect name, dead unique and something that meant a lot to us.
Who writes the songs and what is the band’s process?
Normally it starts with either just Ste or the both of us on acoustic guitars, just jamming, and then it just seems to happen.
In day-to-day life, we collect phrases, words, ideas and stories that can be put into our songs. These could be from real conversations or stories that you hear, or even TV shows etc.
By collecting all these things, it means when you sit down to write you have a big library of things to get the ball rolling, this was something we learnt years ago from Tom Ogden of Blossoms – we’ve been doing it ever since.
There’s no real set way of writing. Sometimes you just have a single idea or word.
Can We Go Faster started from the idea that we wanted to write a song about how it felt when you were a kid on a roundabout getting spun around.
Our songs are littered with references from TV shows, films and books. At our core, I think we enjoy telling stories through the songs; music should make you feel something, otherwise what’s the point?
It should always be substance over style.
Sometimes songs will just land in your lap fully finished, like I Don’t Care when Ste wrote it in one sitting.
Other times, songs will take months, even years – maybe the idea just can’t be brought to life for whatever reason.
It’s like a puzzle that you can’t figure out, but you just push through and keep
trying new ideas and one day it’ll just sort itself out.
You shouldn’t ever give up on your songs.
Has your songwriting changed since you started playing music?
Not really. We have always just stuck to the basics; we always write on acoustic guitars as it just feels more natural, if it sounds good with just voices and acoustic guitar, you know it really has something special to it.
That’s always been our ethos really; we don’t rely on big guitar sounds or anything like that.
Melody is king for us and I think it shows in the tunes, and that’s why they stand out.
Two of our new tracks, Hallelujah and She Keeps Me Warm were partly written and worked out in the studio, which was a new way of doing things for us.
It was good to see how we performed under a time constraint and with that bit of pressure. The foundations of the song were already there, they just got reworked and chopped and changed.
It was more of a collaborative effort and it proved to work really well.
Finally, are there any other bands with identical twins you can think of?!
Only The Proclaimers come to mind, or Jedward – maybe best not to mention them!
What’s next for The Kowloons?
We’ll be joining Red Rum Club at On The Waterfront, we’re playing a festival in Hamburg, Germany, and we’re also playing at the Manichester gig, a tribute to Mani from the Stone Roses, which we’re honoured to be a part of.
You can follow The Kowloons here and find tickets to their shows here.
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