The Molotovs: 'We kind of created a scene from nothing'

Mathew Cartlidge quit school before his GCSEs to commit to the band he formed with his sister. “It wasn’t really a big decision to me,” 17-year-old Cartlidge says. “I was always pretty serious about it and pretty dedicated. I was writing songs and we were getting a bit of a following, and things like that. I just thought, why would I sit through geography and double maths?” 

That band is The Molotovs. Made up of Mathew and sister Issey, 19, they have just released their debut album Wasted on Youth. They have also been described as rock’s next big thing. 

You’re most likely to have come across The Molotovs playing on street corners and flatbed trucks – or probably, social media videos of them on street corners and flatbed trucks – both blonde, both with a similar mod-cut fringe, consciously harking back to a bygone era of London’s cooler corners. They’ve also made light of the criticism which has come with their rise.

“If you hate our band, that’s fine”, read one headline. “The Molotovs on shutting down naysayers”, said another. 

That’s probably more fun than GCSEs. “I’m not gonna make a career in maths or geography. Or science, mind you. Or PE,” Mathew says. “I don’t think anyone, at the end of the day, really cares in the real world. That might be a big deal when you’re 15, 16, but other than that it means absolutely nothing.” 

For her part, Issy dropped out before her A levels. “I was always a super-enthusiastic learner, and still am, but doing that within a very straitjacketed institution, one that doesn’t encourage individualism and crushes the spirit when you’re at your most imaginative and energetic.”

Instead of being another brick in the wall, she turned away from education, listened to album after album, and went out to see bands every night. 

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The siblings come across as good students. Just not of textbooks. Instead, they seem immersed in British music and a certain vibe. Listen to their music and it’s clear – the upbeat drums, punchy guitar stabs and raw vocals are somewhere between punk and Britpop. You can hear The Jam. You can hear Oasis. They see themselves as belonging to the third wave. 

Talking to Mathew and Issey is also a lesson in teenage mythmaking. They are your friends who kept going to hang out in Camden and form a band and make it big, but it actually turned out not to be make-believe. Tell yourself the story and it’s true. Would you have any self-doubt if you were 19 and releasing an album with your brother? 

Issey tells me they got the band going “in the fag end of lockdown”, which is the kind of turn of phrase the 19-year-old employs. Since then, they reckon they’ve done over 600 gigs. Given lockdown, that’s about a gig every three days over the past six years.

They describe taking anything they could: street parties, children’s birthdays, busking, weddings where the bride and groom were fighting on the night, and Millwall FC. “The men there were too macho to show that they were enjoying themselves,” says Issey. 

One of those 600 gigs was for Big Issue. As they talk about the raucous show on a Soho street in December, you realise how comfortable they are finishing each other’s sentences.

“It’s a way to bring democracy to music as well. It’s super accessible,” says Issey, as Mathew comes in: “Because you’re appealing to people that otherwise wouldn’t really be into your music or go to a gig of yours.” Then Issey: “But we thoroughly enjoyed it.” 

Issey likes the idea of talking to vendors, namechecking Big Issue’s recent Stop, Talk and Support campaign, treating people like you would any other, beyond the money side of it.

“There’s not really been a big separation between the band on stage and the fans in the front, you know,” Issey says. “We want to keep it so that there’s less boundaries.” 

For 2026, read 1976. The Molotovs put themselves in a post-lockdown context, a scene of bands being unleashed like “wild dogs”. They will be supporting Yungblud on his upcoming arena tour, and seem part of a new scene forming up. Some five decades on, punk runs through their influences.

“We didn’t have any gigs to play, you know, we just set our own up and kind of created a scene from nothing, putting on all ages youth events,” says Issey.

“But I guess it’s something that’s raw, tapping into the nerve ends, rather than what sounds like more manufactured music that’s just made to fill out the time, it’s quite nice to hear something spiky and jagged that feels more passionate.” 

Barely three decades after the punk explosion, Johnny Rotten was appearing in butter adverts. Is punk still relevant now?

“People are being unapologetic and extremely confident, confidence is something that we’re kind of lacking as a generation, in a way,” says Issey. “I think people are getting less used to being emotional and unreserved and also communicating in the real world. I think punk, in how it communicated, was something that was super vibrant, loud, raw and unapologetic.” 

Part of the punk aesthetic is the Union Jack. At the band’s biggest London headline show in September, Issey stepped onto stage wearing a dress printed with the flag.

“I wore it to talk more about unity. Because everything’s become so polarised, left and right,” she says. “And also, just to remind ourselves what brings us together and why everyone’s in this room, which is to celebrate music and the arts. That’s what British culture is.” 

But the flag has been used in contexts far beyond that recently. Here, Mathew has thoughts: “It’s horrendous. The fact that people are trying to take back British identity by putting it on roundabouts and outside hotels and things like that, they’re using it as a weapon to terrify people.” 

He adds: “I think it’s awful because the Union Jack isn’t an inherently racist thing, but the fact is people are using it like that. We want to change that meaning of it.” 

Nepo baby and industry plant accusations have dogged the band. But there’s something specific I want to know: they share an unusual surname with Conservative MP and shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge. The pair are emphatic that they’re not related, turning their camera round to show their dad in the room, sitting out of shot the whole time. “Simon Cartlidge is our dad, and he’s sitting over there,” Mathew says. 

It’s touched on a frustration. “If people have got nothing to knock you down for musically, or they just don’t like you, they’ll make up anything,” says Mathew. “We get ‘industry plant’ a lot of the time. At the start I got quite shocked by it. But I just realised that you’re competing with people who spend their days trying to beat yesterday’s wanking record.” 

The Molotovs’ debut album Wasted on Youth is out now on Marshall Records. They are currently touring the UK.

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