with Heart Sauce
Reviewed by Trevor Locke
Photographed by Kevin Gaughan
At Leicester’s O2 Academy, support was from local band, Heart Sauce. Heart Sauce is a four-piece band which formed in 2022. I thought their songs were very listenable and had good dynamics. Their set had a good variety of tunes, engaging beats and rhythms which enthralled the audience
Click here for our review of their single, I Stopped Trying, in 2019.
Heart Sauce is playing at The Firebug on 2nd May 2026.
The O2’s main hall was packed to the rafters for tonight’s show; most of the audience were young people who were there for the homecoming gig of this now famous band.
Hard life are from Leicester. The band was formerly known as easy life when it started in 2017. They stopped being called easy life in October 2023 and became known as hard life [lower case] in June 2024. The band’s genre is given as ‘alternative indie pop.’ Hard life is signed to Island Records.
The members of hard life are Murray Matravers (vocals, synthesiser, keyboard and trumpet), Oliver Cassidy (drums and percussion), Lewis Alexander Berry (guitar and bass guitar) and Jordan Birtles (percussion, keyboard and backing vocals).
Hard life’s set started just after nine o’clock and finished at ten thirty. An epic performance, there was a lot of audience interaction and participation. In many of the songs, the audience sang along with the band. This is the live experience; something you cannot get just by streaming the music.
At the back of the stage, the words hard life were up in lights. At times, everyone was waving their arms in the air, and some fans were held aloft on the shoulders of their friends. That made it look like a festival. At one point, audience members were asked to switch on the lights of their mobile phones for one song, and they did – in their hundreds.
The band’s music gave us strong beats and engaging rhythms. Not only did hard life sing their own songs, they also sang several Christmas number one hits which added to the party atmosphere. The band’s performance was very much about the front man (Murray Matravers), who knew how to capture an audience and hold their attention. At times, the bass from the PA system was so strong it felt like there was an earthquake taking place.
What started as a gig became a show, a fully-fledged one at that. It has been a long time since I last witnessed something on this scale. I was impressed by what I saw; it was something I was not expecting.
Given the general downturn in Leicester’s music scene, seeing so many people at one show was both exceptional and inspiring. I came away feeling very satisfied that I had been to a great live experience and wanting to see this band again.
Click here for our interview with the band.
Songs by the band are listed on its website (click here).
Find out about the history of the band on Wikipedia (click here).
Click here for MIL’s preview of the homecoming gig.
