By most accounts, Delhi’s most popular band, comprising Prithwish Dev (vocals), Surojit Dev (drums), Romit Gupta (bass) and Joseph L and Gucci Singh on the guitars, Them Clones has an overflowing list of credits to their name.

Still, every member of the five-piece band, barring Singh, holds a day job with a corporate. Probably explains why they’re called Them Clones. But Dev’s take is different. “If you meet us, we’re not the kind of people who are very fixated on things. Even with our music, we don’t like to be chained to a genre,” he says, adding, “Them Clones could be nothing and everything.”

The band’s approach to gigging, however, is not so casual; it’s their twin dedication to rehearsing and honest song writing that has earned them a national following. “We love to be experimental. We’re not afraid to do a love song or a bollocks track, we’re open to psychedelic. We also don’t take to stage till know how a song is going to sound note for note, there no loose notes lying around at a Them Clones gig. And like all musicians, we write what’s personal to us,”

says Singh.

Wikipedia, proving its fallibility, lists the band’s first released track as Black, White and Grey, written following the 9/11 disaster. “That track has nothing to do with any disaster. It did pretty well and got the band recognition but it was never released either. Everything about that statement is wrong,” says Dev. The front man says that the band allows the mood to dictate the flow of a song, instead of moulding it a certain way. “We end up playing it live only if we like it,” he says.

The musicians also meet outside of the jam room, exchanging current favourites and musical influences. “Right now, I’m thrashing out on Meshegra, a progressive metal band from Scandinavia and also listening to the Kings of Convenience. I had a Michael Jackson VCD, Live from Bucharest, the other day, which I’ve loaned out to Prithwish,” says Singh.