These girls make no bones about it. Ask Martin is proud to be an all-female indie band that sends a positive message about and to female artists everywhere. And they hope it will help them stand out on stage during their high-stakes gig at The Garage in London on March 8th, where they’ll have the chance of winning a showcase spot at a major European venue and the Emergenza finals at the Taubertal Open Air Festival. Ready to lay it all out on the line before the big gig, Ask Martin sits down to open up with Emergenza about “Who Martin is?”.

WHAT GOT YOU INTO THE INDIE ROCK SCENE? ANY PARTICULAR ARTISTS THAT SET YOU OFF?
We all started out as massive fans of bands such as (Poliça, Chvrches, Arctic Monkeys, Vampire Weekend, and Bastille to name a few), and I think that’s what got us into the indie scene as much as anything, we just wanted to make that kind of music ourselves as well as just listening to it.

WHAT DO YOU HAVE THAT OTHER BANDS IN THE GENRE DON'T?
We believe we do three main things that other bands in our genre don't… We're the only all female band on March 8th—definitely a rarity in the music industry, especially the indie genre. People are used to all male bands playing this genre and they expect female bands to be all dancing all singing eye candy who write about dating and leave the real stuff to the guys to write about—we want to prove that that's not true at all and we represent women in music way better and in a more positive way like bands like Haim. I think that’s what gives us a lot of our drive and enthusiasm (as well as the music itself). Being all female in this business is something that we are proud to be. We are also not afraid to mix genres to create our own unique, trademark style. Whilst writing we really enjoy playing around with different styles which results in us keeping our music fresh and interesting, in our own little way. Additionally our second aim in our band is to engage the audience. We make each performance a funny and energetic party between us and the audience, our lead singer is known to dance around and interact and we always jump and react to the music like we would to our favourite bands. Some bands would rather stay separate from the audience but we can't we are constantly breaking the barrier between us and the audience.

WHAT'S WITH THE NAME ASK MARTIN?
Well, to be honest, none of us really know where it came from, although there is some speculation that it originated from our discussions about social media sites and such. We wanted our name to reflect how we rely on the Internet to tell us about ourselves and the world. Thus became Ask Martin, after the search engine Ask Jeeves. We have this joke when we tell our audience our name about ‘Who Martin is?’ - So we always tell audiences "you decide who Martin is".

WHAT BROUGHT YOU TO EMERGENZA UK?
We jumped at the chance to be able to perform for such an experienced and inspiring jury and have the chance to potentially play at a fantastic festival in Germany which would greatly help our own promotion and goals as a band—it is our dream to play gigs around the world to people from all over and share our music with festival crowds and Emergenza may make that possible for us for the first time.

WHAT ARE YOU MOST PSYCHED ABOUT PLAYING AT THE GARAGE IN LONDON?
It’s just such a great opportunity—a few months ago we were watching some of our favourite artists performing there, and now we have the chance to do the same—it’s really exciting for us. The venue also is great because of how the stage is placed and the fact the crowd can be as close as they want!

HOW DOES IT FEEL TO TAKE PART IN THE REVOLUTIONARY NEW FORMAT FOR EMERGENZA FESTIVAL AND HAVE THE CHANCE TO SHOWCASE AT A PRESTIGIOUS VENUE IN A MAJOR EUROPEAN CITY?
Obviously it’s really exciting for us. Emergenza is such a great event, and such a good opportunity for us as emerging artists. It's something we're just so excited to be a part of. The type of events Emergenza is putting on over the world is something that everyone who gets involved with is unbelievably thankful for, which makes the ones that aren't involved jealous of the opportunity!

NERVOUS TO PLAY YOUR 20 MINUTE SET IN FRONT OF A JURY??
If anything we go up there to have a good time, and hopefully, get our audience having a good time as well. But it’s a daunting prospect definitely! We're not used to having our music judged by a professional music jury, but at the same time it’s something we're really excited about. It's mostly a chance to show off what we can do and have a good time whilst doing that! Like we said earlier, its just such a great opportunity!

WHERE WOULD YOUR DREAM GIG BE?
We've kind of always had this dream, as all of us have been to this venue before, of playing at the O2 Academy Brixton. It may not seem like the biggest place however it has sentimental value to us all. I think if we ever play there, we've all agreed, we'd could all die happy be it of old age or the day after the gig.