Some bands manage to cross decades without losing their identity. My Dying Bride are one of them. In 2026, the year marking 35 years since the release of the Towards the Sinister demo, the British band finds itself, however, at a moment of change: following the departure of Aaron Stainthorpe, one of the most central figures in their history, the band has entered a new chapter, with Mikko Kotamäki taking over vocal duties live and new material already in the works.

By Sandra Pinto

In an interview with LOOK mag, guitarist and founding member Andrew Craighan talks about this new phase, the work on the follow-up to A Mortal Binding, how the band continues to create music after more than three decades, and its relationship with the themes of death, loss and melancholy that have always defined its journey. From memories of the early days to changes in the music industry and plans for the future, Craighan makes it clear that, despite everything that has changed, My Dying Bride still have music to write — and plenty left to say.

My Dying Bride have recently entered a new chapter in the band’s history. How would you describe the band’s current state, both creatively and musically?
We are in a rather interesting position at the moment. There have obviously been some significant changes, and I don't think anybody in the band expected us to arrive at this particular point in quite the way we have. But the important thing is that My Dying Bride is still here, we are playing live and we are writing music.
Creatively, there is a renewed sense of purpose. When you’ve been doing something for 35 years, it’s very easy for people to assume that you simply repeat a familiar process, but that has never really been how we work. Every album has its own difficulties and its own peculiar character.
Musically, we are still unmistakably My Dying Bride. The heaviness, the melancholy and the atmosphere are all still there. We have no intention of abandoning any of that. But there is also a feeling that we have a little more freedom to explore things without being too concerned about what people expect. It’s been an unusual few years, certainly, but we are looking forward rather than backwards.

You have confirmed that you are working on new music. How is the writing process going at the moment, and can you already identify any differences between these new songs and the material on A Mortal Binding?
The writing is progressing, and we just today (26/09/2026) completed the music and arrangements on what is so far called “Track 4” although I am always reluctant to describe an album before it actually exists so that’s difficult to say on the identifying differences. What
we think we are writing at the beginning and what eventually comes out of the studio are usually two different things also. Its going well though, surprisingly well considering.
We have been putting ideas together and exploring where we want to take the music. There are certainly elements of our earlier material that I sometimes ponder on, particularly some of the more aggressive death metal influences, but that doesn’t mean we are deliberately trying to recreate an old album. I do like the idea of that but I’ll be honest I much prefer the slow twin harmony lines we use so the old death metal lines are likely staying where they are, those days have gone and we’re not trying to be a band simply devouring its own music to regurgitate it back as new.
On the last album however, A Mortal Binding was a very particular collection of songs written during a particular period in our lives and was deliberately dressed for a particular vocal style. The new material is being created under very different circumstances, and inevitably that will have some influence on the music and in fact already has.  I would like to think we can make something that is both familiar and unexpected. Whether that means something particularly spartan and aggressive or something enormously long and miserable, or a combination of the two remains to be seen. We are not exactly known for writing cheerful three-minute pop singles, so that at least is something we wouldn’t worry too much about.

Musically, we are still unmistakably My Dying Bride. The heaviness, the melancholy and the atmosphere are all still there. We have no intention of abandoning any of that.

Looking back at A Mortal Binding two years after its release, what do you think the album revealed about My Dying Bride that perhaps wasn’t immediately obvious when it came out?
I think it demonstrated just how much of My Dying Bride’s identity is contained within the music itself. We spent around 18months writing and arranging the music on that album, and there is a lot happening beneath the surface. When you are involved in writing and recording something for so long, you can become rather detached from how other people will eventually perceive it.
Looking back, I think there is a determination running through the album. It’s quite uncompromising in places, and there are moments where we allowed the songs to go wherever they needed to go without worrying too much about their length or accessibility. I also think it’s a little tame and possibly dare I say safe in places too, despite it being heavy. It didn’t feel it at the time but it feels it now, well to me anyway.
It’s also interesting how an album changes in your own mind once you’ve had some distance from it. You begin to hear things differently and appreciate certain passages that perhaps didn’t seem particularly significant during recording.
Ultimately, I’m pleased that we made it. It represents that period of the band, and whatever happened afterwards doesn’t change the music we created. I do however wish we had delayed the release until certain other bands had released their albums but sadly, we were not to know what was about to happen until it happened.

After more than three decades, how do you approach writing new My Dying Bride music? Do you still feel the need to challenge yourselves, or does the band’s identity naturally dictate where the music goes?
I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive. You can challenge yourself quite considerably without abandoning everything that makes your music recognisable. Generally, I start with a guitar and an idea. Sometimes it’s a riff, sometimes it’s a melody or even just a particular atmosphere I want to create. From there, the music develops through rehearsals, with everybody contributing their own interpretations and ideas.
One of the advantages of having done this for so long is that you develop an instinct for what works and what doesn’t. But that can also become a disadvantage if you just assume everything you do is gold. We run all our riffs and ideas through the vote if they get voted out
they are out sometimes for ever sometimes just from that place in the song or just out of that particular song, but we all agree we like them or they don’t get used. It keeps it simple and democratic, and we’ve used this policy since The Light At The End of the World album.
On the challenging ourselves line I don’t particularly want to write a song simply because it sounds like something we did in 1993. Having said that, I don’t want to discard a perfectly good piece of music in fear of mindlessly being criticised for sounding like ourselves. That in
itself is repeated challenge. The final challenge I suppose is to find something that excites us. If we aren't interested in what we are creating, It’s difficult to see why anybody else would be.

The themes of death, loss, despair and melancholy have always been deeply connected to My Dying Bride. Has your relationship with these subjects changed as you have grown older?
I think your understanding of those things inevitably changes with age. When you are young, death and loss can be quite abstract, and distant ideas, something you explore through literature, film, not necessarily experiences that happen directly. As you get older however, they become much more immediate. You lose people, relationships change and you become increasingly aware of how quickly time disappears.
The connection to the subject stays the same, your interpretations change, your reactions to them change. Remember the band is art, its entertainment, it’s supposed to be fun for the most part, with a macabre fascination as its driving essence with willing participants that love
the gloomier side of life. We don’t fit in and are quite happy (paradoxically) being left out.
But I don’t necessarily think our music has to become more miserable simply because we are getting older, I thin in fact it should not. There is a great deal of beauty in melancholy, and that’s something we’ve always been interested in, but we are not pushing it, there are far darker bands out there now doing things even we would not.
For me, music is also about creating an atmosphere rather than simply expressing one particular emotion. A passage can be extraordinarily sad without being entirely hopeless. Equally, something incredibly heavy can be quite uplifting in its own peculiar way.
I suspect we’ll continue exploring those subjects for as long as we are making music. We are hardly likely to become a band writing songs about the joys of summer and then attempting to gaslight Metal fans into believing that its bleak.

One of the advantages of having done this for so long is that you develop an instinct for what works and what doesn’t. But that can also become a disadvantage if you just assume everything you do is gold.

2026 marks 35 years since the Towards the Sinister demo. When you think about those early days, what do you remember most clearly, and what would surprise that young version of the band about My Dying Bride today?
Probably the enthusiasm and the complete lack of any sensible expectations. I called it confident naivety – we really thought what we were doing was right, but it was based on no experience at all.
We were young, we loved heavy music and we wanted to create something of our own. We weren’t sitting around discussing where the band might be in 35 years. We were more concerned with getting the songs together, rehearsing and making enough noise to satisfy ourselves.
There was something wonderful about those early days because everything was new.
Recording a demo, seeing your name in a magazine or hearing that somebody in another country had actually bought your music was enormously exciting. What would surprise that younger version of me? Almost everything, I imagine. The fact that we are still here would probably be the first shock.
The idea that our music would take us around the world, that people would still be listening to those early recordings’ decades later, and that we’d be discussing a 35th anniversary would have seemed completely ridiculous.

Very few bands from the early 1990s have maintained such a distinctive identity for so long. What do you believe has allowed My Dying Bride to remain recognisably yourselves despite all the changes around you?
I think a large part of it comes from never really worrying about where we fit into the wider musical landscape. When we started, we were interested in death metal, but we also wanted to incorporate other musical elements that weren’t necessarily associated with that particular scene. We discovered quite early on that we could take those influences and create something that belonged to us. Over the years, we’ve experimented with different approaches, production techniques and instrumentation, but there’s always been a recognisable musical something running through the music.
I think the guitar writing has a great deal to do with that due to that being the first thing that appears, the songs have to make sense musically almost all of our songs started on guitar even some of the early keyboard ones. There are certain melodies, arrangements and ways of constructing songs that have become part of our musical vocabulary. They are not necessarily things we consciously repeat; they are simply how we write.
We’ve also never felt particularly compelled to follow whatever happens to be fashionable in metal. Trends come and go, gimmick bands come and go and that’s perfectly fine, but chasing them is not for me, if its trendy, I’m out and no gimmicks for us either. We simply make the music we want to hear. Fortunately, there are still people out there who want to hear it as well.

Aaron Stainthorpe’s departure brought an end to a very long chapter for My Dying Bride. How did that change affect the band’s creative process and your perspective on the future?
There’s no question that it was an enormous change and a shock. When you’ve shared something for that length of time, any separation is inevitably going to have an impact.
I don’t think this interview would benefit overly to hear our complete side of the story right now but what I can say is this, it has changed nothing from a writing music perspective, Aaron leaving us for his solo career and us writing this new album is the same as when he was in the band. He did not come to the writing rehearsals and contributed literally nothing there, so we have lost nothing and rather paradoxically we have in fact gained something as we now get lyrics and songs titles much sooner than before as they too were kept from us or just came at the very last minute. We also have an idea on how the album art is going to look based on the music too, as opposed to having poor art that does not reflect the music forced upon us and again at the very last minute. So apart from the hidden damage we are still facing, the creative side has benefited greatly as the band are now involved and their efforts and ideas listened to.
From a musical perspective though, the important thing is that My Dying Bride has always been a band. There are a number of people involved in creating the music, and that creative relationship has to continue. It’s not a solo platform for any one of us, it’s a group. Of course, having a different vocalist introduces new possibilities. Different voices have different qualities, and that can influence how you approach a composition or arrangement. But the fundamental character of the music hasn’t disappeared.
I think the experience has reinforced just how important it is to be surrounded by people who actually want to make music together.
After everything that’s happened, the fact that we’re still writing, rehearsing and performing is something I’m very pleased about. There is still plenty we want to do, and that’s where I’d prefer to direct our energy.

There’s no question that it was an enormous change and a shock. When you’ve shared something for that length of time, any separation is inevitably going to have an impact.

Mikko Kotamäki has become involved with the band in the live setting. What has his contribution brought to the current incarnation of My Dying Bride?
Mikko has been absolutely brilliant.
When we first approached him, we weren’t entirely sure how things would work out. Having to replace a vocalist who has been associated with a band for more than three decades isn’t exactly a straightforward proposition.
But Mikko understood what My Dying Bride was about from the beginning. He was already familiar with the music and, importantly, he had a genuine respect for the songs as he claims he is an old fan.
When we first got together for rehearsals everything felt remarkably natural. There wasn’t an enormous amount of discussion about how he should approach every particular line. He understood the material and simply got on with it. His voice is obviously different, and I think that’s a good thing. We didn’t want somebody attempting to imitate the old albums. Mikko brings his own character to the performances while remaining respectful of the original compositions.
He has also brought a very positive atmosphere to the band despite his dire Finnish attitude and fatalistic sense of humour. He’s easy to work with, enthusiastic and entirely professional, which makes an enormous difference when you are travelling and performing together.
I think the audiences have also appreciated what he has brought to the performances. It’s allowed us to continue playing these songs and enjoy being on stage together, which is ultimately what we wanted.

Over the past 35 years, the metal scene has changed dramatically, from the way music is recorded and released to the way audiences discover bands. What changes have had the biggest impact on My Dying Bride?
The way people consume music is probably the most obvious impact on all bands not just us.
When we started, releasing an album was an event. People would go to record shops, buy the record, look at the artwork, read the lyrics and spend time listening to the entire thing. There was a physical connection with the music that I think has ended especially for the younger listeners or those that aren’t into vinyl.
Now somebody can discover a band, listen to three songs, form an opinion and move on to something else in the space of ten minutes when in fact if they had spent more time on it and potentially had to actually buy it, it would likely mean more to them eventually. Music like almost everything else now is simply throwaway and the more we get it for free the more worthless it is perceived as. Not by the artists however, they are still paying back the advances it took to record it. They lose.
I mean it’s not all bad, there are obviously enormous advantages to the modern world. Music is much more accessible, and bands can reach people in places where their records might never have been distributed previously. At almost no notice too, as once your album is uploaded to YouTube before its even released anyone on the globe can listen to it for free. Who can argue with that? Oh, the artists again, as we all learn what AC/DC meant when they sang it’s a long way to the top if you want to rock n roll.
One of the unexpected modern crosses we now must bear is that there is also an expectation that musicians should constantly produce content and maintain a presence on social media. Personally, I would rather spend that time writing music as I despise social media. You will not catch us constantly photographing ourselves in rehearsals or at gigs begging for relevance on Facebook. We intend to let the music and interviews such as this do the talking and maybe the odd photographic update when needed.
My final thoughts on the 35 years of changes would be that recording technology has changed enormously as well. You can achieve things today that would have been incredibly expensive or virtually impossible when we were making our first records. Home recording
and WhatsApp / Dropbox etc makes sharing of music, art and ideas almost instant and has changed the way we get rehearsals prepared, thrash ideas out and generally write the music.
Sadly, though I think the biggest challenge is maintaining the importance of the band itself in an industry that increasingly ensures that those doing the work are at the bottom of the rewards ladder.

Your music has always relied heavily on atmosphere, dynamics and contrast. When writing new material, how important is it to preserve that sense of tension between heaviness and melancholy?
It’s absolutely fundamental to what we do. Each song is based around this concept they are just set to different dial positions.
I’ve always been interested in the relationship between those elements. An incredibly heavy riff can become much more powerful when it’s preceded by something delicate or melancholy. Equally, a quiet passage can take on an entirely different character depending on what surrounds it.
If everything is heavy all the time, eventually nothing feels particularly heavy at all. It’s about creating a journey through the music. You want the listener to experience changes in atmosphere, sometimes quite dramatic ones, without feeling as though they’re listening to a collection of unrelated ideas, which is a lot harder than it sounds. The violin has always been particularly useful in that respect because it can introduce an entirely different emotional quality to a piece of music. But we try to use those elements where they genuinely contribute to the composition rather than simply including them because people expect to hear them or because we have one.
Sometimes the most effective thing you can do is to improve a song is to remove something.
Less can be more, but that takes experience and confidence and sometimes delicate persuasion and if not that, a form of rigid democracy.
For me though I think that contrast stated in the question will always be part of My Dying Bride, regardless of what direction the new material takes. Without it, we’d lose an enormous part of what makes the music interesting to us.

Mikko has been absolutely brilliant. When we first approached him, we weren’t entirely sure how things would work out. Having to replace a vocalist who has been associated with a band for more than three decades isn’t exactly a straightforward proposition.

Is there still something you feel My Dying Bride have not explored musically and would like to attempt in the future?
To be honest no, not really now, I like what we are.
On the other hand however, I still enjoy the idea of writing something enormous again. A composition that takes its time, develops gradually and doesn’t concern itself with conventional song structures or running times. I mean, I would really like to do an MDB – 2112, our version of course would probably still include at least seven parts ending in this – “Attention all mourners of this wretched congregation. Attention all mourners of this wretched congregation. We have consumed your souls. We have consumed your souls”. I would probably not follow that with anything like A Passage to Bangkok though, I’m not sure what Rush were thinking there, probably drugs.
If we don’t deliberately chase a topic or story, sometimes the most interesting ideas are the ones you weren’t looking for. Somebody brings a riff into rehearsal, another person adds something completely unexpected, and suddenly you are working on a piece of music that bears very little resemblance to your original intentions. These types of moments you cannot predict and are truly priceless, so I’d rather remain open to those possibilities than sit down with a list of musical styles we haven’t yet attempted.

Finally, after 35 years, countless albums and several different eras of the band, what still makes you excited about creating and performing music as My Dying Bride?
The same thing that made me want to start a band in the first place: I like creating music.
There’s still something enormously satisfying about picking up a guitar, coming up with an idea and gradually watching it turn into a complete song. That process has never really lost its appeal to me.
And when you finally get everybody together in a rehearsal room and hear something you’ve been working on come to life, it’s a wonderful feeling it really is.
Playing live is another part of it. We’ve been fortunate enough to visit some extraordinary places and meet people who have followed the band for decades. There’s something quite humbling about seeing somebody on the other side of the world singing along to music you wrote in a rehearsal room in Yorkshire.
I don’t think we ever imagined that My Dying Bride would become something that occupied such a significant part of our lives.
Thirty-five years is a very long time, but I don’t feel any particular obligation to bring things to a conclusion simply because we’ve reached a certain anniversary.
I still enjoy this and as long as we’re enjoying ourselves, writing music we are proud of and there are people who still want to hear it, I don’t see any reason to stop. We may have to take a step back as we rebuild but our place in the Doom world still occupied by us.
Besides, after spending 35 years working on this band and writing miserable music, it would seem rather foolish to suddenly let that go when we have so much still to say. And we do intend to say it.

Foto by Luís Pissarro at Under the Doom Festival 2025