The Tyneside quintet all have day jobs and have often been overlooked but are now up for the UK’s most prestigious album award, writing for BT Sport, and might even get a tour bus
When Lanterns on the Lake were told they’d been nominated for the 2020 Mercury prize, guitarist Paul Gregory refused to believe it.
“Paul was upstairs trying to get the baby to sleep,” explains
Singer Hazel Wilde, the mother of their one-year-old daughter. “He said, ‘Stop kidding, what have you really come upstairs to tell me?’ Then he thought I must have got the wrong idea.” She sighs into a lager in a North Shields pub – her first visit in months, owing to motherhood and lockdown.