Meet Tough Cookie, the east London band making tunes primed for the biggest of stages

When Tough Cookie jump on a Zoom call with Rolling Stone UK, we found the four-piece in their nerve centre, an unassuming basement in deepest east London where every crevice of the room appears to be filled with instruments and musical paraphernalia at large.

It was here that the band – vocalist August Tse, bass player Daniel Hvorostovsky, drummer Gavin Sullivan and guitarist Jess Ayres – created their excellent new EP Devotion, which marks the next step in their journey as one of Britain’s most exciting young bands.

On the swirling ‘Let Me Die (Curled In Your Arms)’ there is shades of Radiohead at their most anthemic, while the title of the EP takes its title from Patti Smith’s 2017 book Devotion, after August took inspiration from how the legendary punk-poet discussed her writing style in the celebrated tome.

Now, with a handful of huge tunes and their own rehearsal space at the ready, Tough Cookie are setting their sights on the biggest of stages.

Read our interview with Tough Cookie and listen to their music via our Play Next playlist on Spotify below.

Tell us about this little Aladdin’s Cave we seemingly find you in…

Daniel Hvorostovsky: This is our only recording space. We’re based in Dalston under a church. It’s the basement of a church. Half storage room, half studio!

And presumably where you worked on your next EP Devotion, which lands on 23 October?

Daniel: Yeah, this room that you’re seeing right here is where we created it, the whole thing. August produced the whole thing themselves. We spent two or three weeks just in this place, 24/7, and that’s what came out.

What’s changed since the last mixtape (2025’s The Countryside is Good for You)?

August: I think we probably wanted to capture the mood better, fitting with the actual songwriting, because I think the last mixtape was all over the place. It was a mix of songs written throughout like five years, whereas this EP was written over the course of a year, so I think it was really important to make sure that the mood of those songs were portrayed in the music as well.

Jess: I think it’s more representative of who we are as well, because it’s more of a snapshot of recent times than spanning a time where we were just like completely different people. It’s a true representation of the four of us, I think, and the kind of music that we want to make.

Where does it land sonically, and what has shaped it?

August: I think the mood and the environment we did it in was the main influence. This basement! The lyrics enforce what the song sounded like at the end of the day and we can take influences from Radiohead and Jeff Buckley, but I feel like that was more in the instrumentation and specific moments in like guitar parts, where we were influenced by those bands, but in terms of the mood of the EP it was inspired by the environment.

There’s a lot of personal songs on there. ‘Let Me Die…’ is this tale of getting close to someone even though you shouldn’t. What do you draw on for them?

August: They’re personal stories, yeah. I’m not very good at writing stories that aren’t real. Bob Dylan’s amazing at that. He can work with an imaginary story, whereas I really struggle doing things like that. I have to write from my perspective most of the time.

Is that cathartic?

August: A little bit yeah. How I imagine people writing in their diary about their day or the shit that they’ve experienced, is the same as writing a song, expressing a feeling you couldn’t get out in regular conversation with someone you’re hanging out with.

The EP takes its name and emotional thread from Patti Smith’s book Devotion. Why did you want to use that as a framing device?

August: I think the way she phrases things, even tragedy, in a very poetic way is something that stuck with me. I wouldn’t say the actual plot of what she’s writing about in that book specifically is what started Devotion. It’s more the way she writes and how she portrays or conveys emotion.

Has it come on her radar?

August: Honestly, I think she’d hate this fucking music!

No she wouldn’t!

Daniel: No, I think you’re allowed to take inspiration, you’re allowed to take, you’re allowed to take ideas from certain things, and I don’t think Patti Smith would be too against that sort of thing.

Well that’s kinda her ethos, isn’t it?

Daniel: Yeah, I mean, if she wants to come after us, we’re made of absolutely nothing, so she’s can have it back, it’s OK!

Is there one song of yours she’d click with?

All: ‘Let Me Die…’

Daniel: It’s a bit more on the avant-garde side or something, but it’s also got some beauty hidden underneath of it. I think the lyrics are quite sort of not unhinged but like disjointed slightly, which I feel like she might enjoy.

These songs are quite big in their scope. How does that translate into your live show?

Gavin: As we were saying earlier about this space. it feels way more like Project Rock band now, because we have everything at our disposal to develop the tunes live, but in a way that feels more natural. Instead of having four very specific hours we’re playing money for, we can make sure that a song gets naturally played in a certain way and we can bounce off each other. We know we won’t sound like a stadium band, but we do hype up some of the, some of the parts and the tones to be played live.

Have any shows stood out as a benchmark of that so far?

Daniel: I really enjoyed a Leeds gig we played a few weeks ago. We drove to Hyde Park Book Club for a freshers event and because we got there so early cos we sound checked and had a lot of time to kill in between. Me and August went for a walk around Leeds because that’s where we went to uni, and it felt dead. But then the gig happened and apparently everybody in Leeds was at Hyde Park Book Club. So that was nice.

Jess: We had a great gig in North Shields too. Audiences in London can be a bit tame, so it’s really nice when you get out to smaller towns in the UK that seem more appreciative. It’s a special thing.