Lucid Liars at Belladrum 2026 | Behind the Festival Performance

It's Wednesday and you know what that means.

We played at Belladrum Tartan Hearts Festival on Saturday 1st of August. This was our third time playing the festival, and the first time we played the weekend (previously played on the opening day and the Friday). We were offered the Saturday afternoon slot towards the start of the year, something that made it feel a little more real to us, rather than playing the Thursday or Friday.

The band chat was full of hype patter, we'd run the set just once a few weeks prior. Our mentality was that we wanted to be fresh, to play these songs as if we'd been almost looking forward to playing them together and the stage was irrelevant. I remember at the practice, on a Sunday in the newly powered Portacabin (slightly saved from rain damage), the general air of...not sure how to describe it other than "we've got this, bros". Everything went smoothly. We had our new monitoring setup good to go, everything leveled, and we begun to run through the songs. I think it was by the third song I begun to feel that we didn't really need to do much more, but for the sake of completeness decided to finish up the set. Everything sounded fresh, enjoyable. When we finished, the question was asked - "Should we run it again?", and immediately answered by a resounding "There's no need to".

Then begun a couple of weeks of other items. We got some blogs done, made some plans, hashed out some new songs. Business as usual. I think we had more discussion on whether or not we were going to have matching outfits than anything else, we eventually settled on Hawaiian shirts to hit the festival vibe. From the Belladrum hype that we'd had the last couple of times we'd played, there was something comforting in the trust that your bandmates were all together as a unit, ready to play what was probably one of our highlights of the year. We did the album launch in February where we played 'Hard Times' in it's entirety and the setup and rehearsals, alongside the pre-production stuff, was very different. We were relatively inexperienced with the material compared to where we are now and on looking back it's amazing how comfortable everything is now.

We all arrived at different times to get our accreditation and parking passes, agreeing to meetup at the festival to go catch some bands we'd been looking out for. Some of us managed to catch In Crisis and Space Van, others seen Delirium and Dr. Wook and the Hollowpines, one of us went off to watch some rasslin' (pro wrestling for the uninitiated), and all four of us convened with beers in hand to watch the tail end of a fancy dress show leading in to our friends Bad Actress. For a brief hour or so it felt like a lads day out. We were even recognised by some folk at the festival which is always surreal - "You're the guy from Lucid Liars yeah? We're heading over to see you guys in a bit", always awesome to see but still catches me off guard. 5 people in total, that's a new record for us.

Then it was time to go get ready at 1.30pm. We went to the car to get all our stuff, load it in to the dressing area, caught up with a couple of bands also hanging out backstage, and waited patiently for our turn. And having some beers and fancy canned water (gotta stay hydrated - 1 beer to 1 water, minimum).

As an independent band who has played across different stages at Belladrum, and other festivals in general, it always amazes me how quick the turnover is - regardless of the stage. On this day, the previous band were off stage at 2pm, and we had until 2.45pm to setup all our gear, line check to the desk, get the sound tweaked for front of house, and begin our show.

If this were us just last year? I think this would have been a lot more stressful. With our new setup where our in ears are set beforehand? Relatively pain free. There was the usual back and forth with the front of house sound engineer, as there always is regardless of the stage, but we got there in the end. I think by around 2.15pm everything was setup and we were just tuning and getting ready to soundcheck. We run the first 2 minutes of 'By My Side', our manager Robbo confirmed the front of house sound was a good representation of us, and then we were back in the dressing area by around 2.25pm. I even checked my watch and did an audible "bloody hell that was quick".

In the dressing area we again got to talking, about not much in particular, took some photos, and just took in the atmosphere. Everyone in the band including Robbo had an air of confidence, we knew this was going to be a good one.

We had arranged for some new entrance music for this show, put together a few days before hand. It's basically hype music opening with a sample of a Macho Man Randy Savage promo. Something to play over the speakers while we walked on stage and signal to folk that the show was about to begin.

When we got on stage and announced ourselves, more folk came in. It was about half full by the time we were all on stage, and our mission was to get the tent as full as possible by the end of our time.

Our set for the show consisted of 5 songs from 'Hard Times' and 2 new songs (given our need to always be moving forward), one that we'd only agreed to add to the set a few days prior after noticing that giving 5 minutes to chatting to the crowd was probably too generous for us.

'You Are All I Want'

'By My Side'

'Lilith'

'Dollhouse'

'Mystified'

'A Place for Everything'

'Paper Tiger'

Hearing the crowd cheering loudly at the end of each song (and in the case of Lilith and Dollhouse each false finish), was very humbling. Seeing a small sea of arms up and clapping along was even more humbling. We ended the set with 30 seconds to spare, and we were off stage with all our gear within 5 minutes or so. This simply wouldn't have been possible even a year ago with our previous setup, but the time and effort we've invested in ourselves as a unit has paid off tremendously. Everyone had a part to play to allow this to go as smoothly as possible, and a big part of this was down to everyone pitching in.

We spent a bit of time in the dressing area (drinking more beers and water) and just enjoying that the show went well. At some point it was suggested we go get some food, and that was the plan for the next hour.

One thing I wanted to get before we all went our separate ways for the day was to get a team photo - there's a lot of work that goes in to keeping Lucid Liars going, and a lot of it happens with us acting independently, doing our part on our own. Whether it's recording, demoing, writing up ideas, working on future plans, creating art, taking/editing photos, booking shows, speaking to promoters, liaising with industry folk - it all happens because we're motivated to do so independently, and it means we can come together as a confident unit. We get together somewhat often, but there's always something to do on our own to make the band the best it can be. I wanted a proper photo of the 5 people that make Lucid Liars happen, and thankfully Chick from Bad Actress was around to snap it. Lucid Liars is and always will be a passion project for the love of the game, and now we have a snapshot of the 5 people who make it happen, on a great day, with lots of great memories. We've posted this pic to our social media, and it's the cover photo of this blog.

All that was left to do was it was enjoy the rest of the festival, our small part over for another year. Oh, we also got some coffee. It was really hot and I think I'm still waiting for it to cool down.

Will we be back next year? I guess we need to watch this space - but if this was anything to go by, we'd be more than looking forward to it should the opportunity arise.

Until next time.