There is so much to talk about with Since Yesterday: The Untold Story Of Scotland’s Girl Bands, we had to split our interview into two main parts. The film’s premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2024, where it was the festival’s closing film, in August was well received, and now showings are scheduled across the central belt, and beyond.
SNACK caught up with directors Carla J. Easton (musician) and Blair Young (video maker) to go into more detail about the movie, the music and some of the stories behind the documentary.
In the film, for the 70s, 80s and 90s bands, fanzines and fan culture was vital. The way we connect now and engage has changed so much. Do you think it’s easier now for like-minded people to get together?
CJE: It’s quite interesting when you look at organisations like Popgirlz, which exist solely as a private Facebook group. It’s almost like that’s the now version of the nineties fanzine that Lung Leg and Hello Skinny talk about so passionately, that’s their version of it.
We’re lucky that with the internet, we can connect globally on a much easier and quicker scale. But with the fanzines, they’re just great artefacts. They’re artworks in themselves and the care that’s gone into making them. It was amazing to hear how they worked with people setting up P.O. boxes and sending each other like toys and sweeties. It was an identity, whereas I think online groups don’t have that identity.
BY: As the internet usually ends up being, it’s the best and the worst. It’s great, you can just make music and get it out there and that should be a good thing. But if everyone’s doing that, not that it’s a popularity contest, you can get lost. It’s probably like being a wee band at SXSW. It’s very easy to get lost in this huge, massive music over the course of a week.
CJE: I guess they were using fanzines the way we use social media, to connect with other artists and speak to each other. And fanzines result in beautiful physical artwork that didn’t exist without those connections, which is quite nice.


In the film there’s a lot of really great early footage, but the clip that I’ve probably most enjoyed was His Latest Flame playing live. It put you in that room and you could actually see the band, they’re connecting with each other and they were enjoying it. Were there any scenes for you two that cut to the heart of what you wanted to achieve?
CJE: My favourite bit of archive uncovered? I think we both love the photo of The McKinleys, where it’s not posed and someone’s just caught them at the side and they’re dancing and holding hands.
Because Jeanette just spoke so fondly of Sheila, I mean, she’s still so in awe of her sister and it’s just the perfect photo to encapsulate their bond. One of my favourite bands in the whole film and I know you’re not meant to have favourites, but I just love Hello Skinny.
They’re just the ultimate bedroom band and their demos are just raw as fuck. And, see all that bedroom home recorded footage? It’s just glorious. It’s just absolute teenage, let’s be in a band and make a noise. So, it was really great to see it, wasn’t it?
BY: Yeah. There are quite a few bits. It’s so exciting to get bits of archive and jailbreak stuff out of the BBC archive, which. I don’t think it’s been broadcast in 50 years. I know some of the Peel Sessions have been brought back out in the last decade or so, but this footage and other bits wouldn’t have been seen in 50 years. It was exciting. I can remember the first time we got hold of it, the little screener that you get and open that up and it being as magical as I expected it to be.
CJE: But also just when Jill from Strawberry Switchblade said I’ve got some stuff for you. And, Blair, I remember you phoned me up. You’re not going to believe what Jill’s just given me. And it was a black suitcase covered in white, hand painted polka dots. There must have been a thousand photographs. With all the contact sheets of Strawberry Switchblade, stuff that’s never been published. I remember getting Cat in to scan it all and she was like, ‘I’m going blind from scanning black and white polka dots, it’s all I can see when I shut my eyes.’
It was just so beautiful, all this stuff, you can’t believe. Little things like being excited interviewing Jackie Bradley from Sophisticated Boom Boom and His Latest Flame and she said [to us] they were the first band to walk on stage at the Barrowlands, because they supported Simple Minds. How did I not know that? The first ever gig I went to was the Barrowlands in 1997 when I went to see Embrace with my big brother. What if I had seen that somewhere as a 13-year-old girl? The first band to play this stage was His Latest Flame. And Teen Canteen didn’t start until I was 28.
It’s also a film about female friendship, and I don’t think the media tells that story a lot with female groups.
CJE: Yeah. And I think it’s just that. It was interesting in the film, we wanted it to be all women. We wanted it to be a girl band because it was almost like a political statement. The bands that are like, you know: I just asked my pals, it was, do you have a drum kit? Cool. Can you play it? No, it doesn’t matter. Let’s form a band. I mean, that was how Teen Canteen started. We didn’t set out to form a girl band. And that’s how most bands start, you know, can you play guitar? I know three chords. Cool. You’re in my band. And I think a lot of bands do start out of friendship, whether that’s school friendships, whether that’s like music friendships, whether. Blair and I, we’re friends because of a love of music, we met at a gig and that was it. Music brings people together as a tagline.
BY: I’m glad there’s a strong element of that in the documentary because it’s easy to focus on the friction between people, say Jagger and Richards. John and Paul, or Liam and Noel, that’s what documentaries focus on. The friendship thing is very important and I think that’s where most fans come from in the first instance, but then also you’re working collectively together. And that’s why we zeroed in on the particular area that we did, because it was what started the conversation. At one point it became about women music in Scotland in general, but then very quickly refocused because it felt like this was a particular area that spotlight never really shown on, in the industry and globally too. The percentages are insane.
Carla, you’re better positioned to answer this than Blair or me: are things getting better?
CJE: I think things are getting better. But the groundwork is being done by the artists themselves, forming our own communities and peer networks, pushing for change. I started making music 20 years ago when Team Canteen arrived on the scene. Very much alone. I look around now and it’s amazing that there’s so many members of Popgirlz and Hen Hoose, because that wasn’t there when I started making music.
I started making music thinking, this is for everyone, and then being like, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. I would have loved it if the networks that exist now in Scotland on a grassroots level had been there when Teen Canteen formed. It would have been brilliant. Like, Girls Rock Glasgow and Girls Rock Edinburgh. It would have been, wow, there’s so many opportunities. I would just like to see those opportunities come from somewhere that aren’t from artists themselves.
BY: You just have to look around to see how slow things are to change. What female bands do you have now? The Last Dinner Party? So, there’s one. And you could have said that in the eighties, too. So, in the eighties, people would go, oh, yeah, The Bangles. Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard of the Bangles. And then they would probably start to struggle.
14 years later, I think most of the public are in the same position, and that’s not the public’s fault. You can go and look for them if you want but it’s the machine of the record industry and who they pick up on to promote. So, people at the moment would be able to say, The Last Dinner Party or Wet Leg, although that would be a band that’s confusing for people because if they’re watching live, there’s some guys in the band, but the creative core of that band are the two women. So, yeah, go back.
CJE: Well, they [Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers] are the band.
BY: I was going to say earlier, we’ve always struggled with using the term girl band for this. We don’t want the term to be important, but it’s still a thing, because the machine of the record industry – who are the gate holders of everything – they’ll say we just do what it’s going to sell. But everybody’s got to be active in making the change. There’s no way that women don’t want to work collectively, and what we have [with lack of representation] is just a big coincidence. It’s got to be the process of the machine that, for whatever reason, has never consistently picked up on that being something that would be of interest to the general public. And it is something of interest to the general public.
CJE: All you do is have to look at the history of rock and pop and ask where’s the all-female version of the Beatles? Where’s the all-female version of the Rolling Stones? Where’s the all-female version of Nirvana? Where’s the all-female version of U2, Coldplay, Franz Ferdinand? Artists like Oasis or blur, artists that have careers of longevity, that are stadium selling, that are internationally selling. They’re internationally touring throughout their entire career. They’re still going.
Even if you look at the Spice Girls, it was two albums, three albums? And that was it and then it disbanded. And where’s the girl groups that are still making music, that have had a career of 20 years, that are selling out stadiums? Why? Why is it okay for us to have female solo singers? You know, we’re dominating the charts in terms of, Beyonce, Kylie, Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift. That’s okay to be a solo woman in Rock n Roll and not okay for a girl band, where are they? Why are they not allowed to do that?
I don’t like the definition or the distinction between girl group and girl band, because we’ll say boy band for One Direction and they don’t play instruments. It’s a band. The voice is an instrument and it shouldn’t be discredited and not regarded as an instrument. I can say that as a singer, but why is that okay?
There’s so much stuff we could have explored in the film but we want to make sure we tell the stories of the bands. I want people to think they need to look at my record collection here. Who’s in this? Who’s not in this? Who’s on my Spotify playlist? Who’s not on my Spotify playlist? Why am I getting tickets to go and see this show? Who’s on the lineup? Who’s in the lineup at this festival?


Without giving any of the film away, it ends with a note of hope. How important was it for you to have that message?
CJE: To be honest. It depends on what mood I was in, depending on what I was reading, the film could have ended on a very negative note. Yeah, it could have easily ended on a negative note. I’m on the associate board of advisors of Hen Hoose, a mentor and teacher at Rig Arts, working with a lot of young teenagers and young kids, where there are women and non-binary people. And I’ve lectured freelance at UWS before, mentoring students, young women. I’m not going to sugarcoat it, but it’s hopeful when you look at the work being done today by incredible people in the scene that are fighting for change and you have to readjust why we’re doing that and understanding that.
Me and Blair, well, I’m very aware our film’s got hundreds of paradoxes. We’ve done that thing where in order to talk about girl bands, one, we’ve used the term ‘girl band’. We’ve tried to fit as many girl bands in as possible, which as was said in the nineties section of the film, journalists just grouped us all together to write about us, understand what we’re doing. We’ve done that.
I’m not trying to hide that. The film is full of paradoxes. The film is flawed, but the film is also about hope. We’ve done it with nothing but love and respect for the people in the film. It’s time to rewrite for the voices that aren’t being included to this day and acknowledge them, and demonstrate that link between the past and present.
At the end of the film, when we were making that section we thought, this is quite hopeful and powerful if you include all voices saying, we need change. Why are you pushing for change? Well, for who comes after. If it’s not going to change in my lifetime, I hope it changes for the people making music after me. If the change doesn’t happen in your time, maybe it was one of the tiny baby steps that added up to it being a giant leap for the change.
The Glasgow premiere of Since Yesterday: The Untold Story Of Scotland’s Girl Bands takes place at the GFT on 18th October, with further showings through to 25th October. The film is also shown in Edinburgh, Dundee and Stirling throughout October.
Featured Photo Credit: Graham Gavin