Pennsylvania’s Title Fight formed in 2003 but didn’t release their first full-length, Shed, until 2011. Since then, the band has gained popularity in the alternative/punk/melodic hardcore (or whatever other subgenres you want to use) with their second and third albums, most recently this year’s Hyperview.

 With their second appearance at LA’s FYF Fest coming up this weekend, bassist Ned Russin chatted with Myspace about the festival, social media and what it’s like to keep the same band together since before high school.

 What do you think of FYF Fest?

We’ve played FYF once before, and it’s always been really cool. The lineup has always been really cool and eclectic. There’s everything from cool indie bands to big reunions. There are older bands and always a good crop of new bands coming up. This year, I know I’m excited to see Morrissey and bands like Belle and Sebastian.

 If you could give one piece of advice for someone attending or playing FYF for the first time, what would it be?

 Definitely wear sunscreen. That’s the most simple, basic, necessary advice I could give anyone for FYF. To watch any band or be a part of the festival, you’re going to be outside pretty much all day. Just make sure to take care of yourself and have the basic necessities, and it’s going to make your whole weekend a lot better.

 Title Fight’s been around for quite some time, but it’s only in the last handful of years that you’ve really gained popularity. How did the band’s slow start affect things?

We’ve been around for a very long time because we started playing music together when we were 12 years old. We formed the mentality of the goals and expectations and all of those lofty ideas that bands have very naturally and innocently when we were very young, so I think that really helped us.

 We started by playing a bunch of shows locally (in Kingston and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania), and then when we were old enough to drive we started playing shows in places like Philly and New Jersey. Right out of high school we started touring, so it all happened very naturally. I think that allows us to operate in a way that seems authentic, and we can interact with everyone in other bands and the industry as a whole in a different way than most bands. We don’t feel like we’re owed anything by anyone because we did all this work, we wanted to do everything because we enjoy playing music. I think that gets a result that’s simple, but also honorable and formidable.

Because of how young you started playing together, do you think there’s a different chemistry among the guys of Title Fight that doesn’t necessarily exist in bands that got together in their 20s or 30s?

It takes more than one person to do anything if you’re playing in a band. You’re always working and playing with one to four other people, so it takes a certain style—or even an ideology—for everything to come together. We’ve been playing together for so long and since we were so young that it’s to the point where we found our style together. It really lends itself to jamming and the creative process, because if I sit down with any of the other guys, I know what they’re going to do and they know what I’m going to do.

What’s something that people should know about Title Fight if they’re unfamiliar with the band, or if they’re seeing you for the first time at FYF?

We live in an era when people want information at the tips of their fingers at all times. It can be great, but I think it takes a little of the magic out of the creative process. People always want to know what’s going on, but it’s weird how personal people want to make something when there’s something bigger and deeper going on. Showing everyone what we’re eating for lunch while recording the drum track for a song no one’s ever heard before takes some of the magic away from recording. I don’t want to sound like a crotchety old man hating on the technology though, I just think we live in a time when it’s too easy to get to know personal facts and trivia about people.

Our online presence is kind of bare bones because we care about the music above everything else, we’ll put our new music up, when we’re playing, stuff like that, but that’s about it. We’re happy to talk to people about anything if they come up to us, but we’re first about writing and performing songs. Social media is a great, powerful tool for a band at this time—look at the era when you had to rely on radio, it was much harder for bands, and that’s why the bands who made it are who they are. Now there are underground bands everywhere that can utilize social media to put out music for cheap or free.