Thom Rylance of The Lottery Winners performs on stage at Latitude Festival. He squats down as he plays guitar, grinning at the crowd.
The Lottery Winners have some seriously famous friends (Picture: Bonnie Britain/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock)

Once one of our greatest cultural exports, British rock bands are facing a serious drought in the UK charts right now – but that could be about to change.

The Lottery Winners could be the guitar band to break the pop domination and fill that chart void with their newly announced album KOKO.

Last year they landed a breakthrough number-one album and are gunning to do the same but this time with the blessing of icons like Frank Turner, Morrissey, and even Oasis.

‘We’re a big deal now,’ lead singer Thom Rylance declares, grinning at as he sits unassumingly in a Wetherspoons in Wigan for our Zoom call.

The group has gained so much traction, they’ve even been named by some outlets as the underdog Oasis Live ’25 support act (an alternative to Blossoms, who coincidentally they have also worked with).

The Lottery Winners are your favourite band’s favourite band and if you haven’t heard of them yet, you’re definitely about to.

Picture of The Lottery Winners, all wearing yellow long-sleeved top and white dungarees. The background is blue and covered in daisies. They lean towards the camera. (L to R) Joe Singleton, Thom Rylance, Robert Lally, and Katie Lloyd
They are releasing a brand new album in February (Picture: PR)

BOURNEMOUTH, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 29: (L-R) Thom Rylance, Joe Singleton and Katie Lloyd of The Lottery Winners perform at BIC Bournemouth on February 29, 2024 in Bournemouth, England. (Photo by Harry Herd/Redferns)
The Lottery Winners have toured with some huge names (Picture: Harry Herd/Redferns)

Thom and bassist Katie Lloyd confess the attention is all rather overwhelming, especially from their own personal heroes.

‘I have Noel Gallagher’s number, and Chad Kroeger FaceTimes me sometimes, and it’s weird,’ laughs Thom in disbelief.

Success hasn’t happened overnight, though. Word of mouth has propelled The Lottery Winners into these circles 16 years into their career.

‘We’ve been doing it a long time,’ he continues. ‘We started off playing pubs in Leigh [Manchester] to literally no one and just loved it enough to sacrifice our entire social lives and finances to pursue music as a life and as a career.

‘Luckily, it worked out — we’re in a good position now where it’s working.’

The Lottery Winners — consisting of Thom, Katie, Robert Lally, and Joe Singleton — slogged for over a decade before getting signed in 2020.

Their debut self-titled album landed at number 23 in the UK charts, with the track Love Will Keep Us Together climbing to a similar spot on the singles chart.

It was three years later with the album Anxiety Replacement Therapy that the band burst into more mainstream success, with the hitmakers calling it a ‘key that opened a door’.

Often the music comes from songwriter Thom’s struggles with mental health and ADHD, with a track on the new album simply titled Panic Attack.

He explains they ‘dressed it [up] with a kids choir and brass, and it’s all summery. There’s a juxtaposition of it being really melodic and quite nice and uplifting.

Katie Lloyd performs on stage, playing bass guitar. She smiles at someone to her left. She is wearing a purple suit with black top underneath.
Bassist Katie Lloyd loves to think of them as ‘smile music’ (Picture: REX/Shutterstock)

Thom with Noel Gallagher backstage. They pose with arms around each other, both wearing sunglasses.
Frontman Thom Rylance revealed he’s got Noel Gallagher’s number (Picture: Thom Rylance)

‘But if you actually peel it back a little bit, there is something darker. It feels like what I’ve had to do for years, which was masking those feelings.’

Returning to his cheeky demeanour, Thom adds that this was ‘very, very smart’ of his songwriting and should be appreciated as such, much to Katie’s amusement.

She teases that he has ‘all the ego’ the group could ever need, especially thanks to their newfound success.

However, ego is not the defining trait of The Lottery Winners’ music, the indie rock songs are much more honest and vulnerable than Thom’s cheeky persona would suggest.

‘I had to talk about things that I knew and things that were important to me.’ he shared. ‘If I can tell a song is disingenuous straight away, it doesn’t do anything for me. It just feels empty.’

Thom poses with Rag 'n' Bone Man backstage at festival. Thom has mouth open as he leans into Rag 'n' Bone Man (R)
The Lottery Winners have burst into the world of the ‘very famous’ (Picture: Thom Rylance)

Robert Lally and Thom Rylance of The Lottery Winners performing on stage together. Thom lifts guitar up.
They’ve worked with everyone from Nickelback to KT Tunstall (Picture: Lorne Thomson/Redferns)

It was only in the last few years, since his ADHD diagnosis, that Thom has begun to really address his mental health, having felt like a ‘broken or bad’ person for much of his life.

The Let Me Down singer recalled: ‘I got kicked out of two schools, didn’t really fit in anywhere, and I felt like the easy things that everybody could do, I just couldn’t. And I knew that I wasn’t stupid.

‘So someone said to me that I might have ADHD, and so I did a lot of research into…’

His wifi cut out here and Thom returned with the slightly baffling statement that ‘lemons sink but lime float’, which he promised was a ‘sick punchline’ — Katie looked unconvinced.

The Lottery Winners have spent the last year touring with the likes of Noel Gallagher, Blossoms, and Nickelback, with Chad Kroeger featured on KOKO.

He covered various Oasis tracks alongside the band during Nickelback’s tour and has released a version of Rockstar with their vocals featured too.

‘This door opened,’ explained Thom. ‘Then all these cool, really famous people were just like, “Hey, come in, sit down. We’ve been waiting for you”. It’s strange because we are around famous people a lot now, and outwardly act very cool about it, but inside just absolutely freaking out all the time.’

Katie, who lets Thom do most of the talking, simply shakes her head when asked about the sudden dizzying heights the group has reached.

Thom opens mouth in shock, holding official chart number one trophy.
They’re hoping a second number-one album could solidify their careers in the music industry (Picture: Thom Rylance)

Thom Rylance and Katie Lloyd sing into microphones facing each other on stage.
The Lottery Winners are your favourite band’s favourite band (Picture: Lorne Thomson/Redferns)

While they may have the backing of some big names, The Lottery Winners are still ‘nervous’ to release KOKO to the public — despite Thom ‘nearly leaking it 20 times’.

He confessed: ‘You feel really, really vulnerable. It’s really scary to put anything out into the world, like, “Look this is a piece of me and I really hope you like it, and if you don’t, I won’t be bothered but I will be really bothered and I’ll be dead upset about it.”‘

‘Someone once called us smile music,’ Katie added. ‘I really took that [to heart], it was so sweet.’

Thom agreed: ‘We’re just normal people but we’re getting to do this extraordinary thing, and we’re really grateful for it.’

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