Oisín Walsh, half of Irish duo Spearside, once toyed with the idea of becoming a priest. It was a calling he shared with many of the artists who influenced him, who he noticed had flirted with religious life. A few years back, he reached a crossroads and took his religious urges seriously enough to explore them.
“I wasn’t surprised that I noticed it in myself,” he says. “It’s not a million miles apart, being in a rock ’n’ roll band in front of an audience and being on an altar. It’s the impulse to preach — although that sounds horrible. It’s the impulse to try and deliver something that’s beyond what you can conjure up — to be part of a community and something bigger.”
Ultimately, when faced with choosing the cloth, he realized he wasn’t truly called to it and didn’t have the discipline for it. Plus, he met his fiancée, which sealed the deal. Still, he insists, “Being in a rock band is a pseudo-religious experience. The unity between what’s happening on the stage and what’s happening in the crowd is like a religious service.”
Spearside has put out a handful of songs over the past few years, mostly under the radar. He may not have much public-facing experience, but Oisín’s charm is in full effect. He is sharp, funny, and mixes banter with anecdotes.
He (guitar/drums/vocals) and his brother Cian (bass/vocals), the other half of Spearside, are from the scenic, medieval town of Trim in County Meath, Ireland, which, notes Oisín, has won “Ireland’s tidiest town competition.”
“It’s all little flowerpots and people sweeping,” he says. “It’s so quiet it’s like a sensory deprivation tank. Everybody knows everybody’s business, which can be a blessing and a curse. We have a huge Norman castle in the middle, and Braveheart was partially filmed here. It’s hard to be from a place like this and not be pretty chill.”
A sound engineer by trade, 28-year-old Oisín has a technical handle on the studio side, but confesses, “We really don’t know what we’re doing. If we went to record somewhere else with a great producer and it sounded amazing, would we recognize ourselves in it? We’re so used to the sound of us in this room that it would be alien to hear it outside of here.
“Anton Newcombe of Brian Jonestown Massacre says he makes records that sound good enough to leave headroom to improve in the future. If you come out of the gate making something that sounds like Weezer, where do you go from there?”
Cian is Oisín’s most reliable sounding board. Two-and-a-half years younger, he’s more of a listener than a talker. You won’t get the cliché warring brothers here. “We keep a healthy level of conflict all the time so it never escalates, the release valve is always open,” Oisín says. “We’ve always done things together in a constructive way. We’ve had healthy outlets for our violence, like Gaelic football. The band is never a place where we start smashing guitars and throwing mike stands at each other.”
Oisín dismisses other people’s opinions as “largely irrelevant,” stating his brother’s opinion as the only one he values. The 2025 four-track Hatchet Man EP (which includes a cover of Tubeway Army’s “Are Friends Electric?”) marks the beginning of a more defined sound, one where it’s often impossible to tell who’s singing which song.
It took a while to get to their sound, which they call psych hardcore. “It was formless, shapeless, heavy guitars with songs — the same idea everyone’s had a million times,” Oisín says. “You have to explore so many avenues and go through so many permutations of your original idea before you can see a thread you can recognize yourself in.”
I suggest Hatchet Man sounds like a cross between Queens of the Stone Age and Pinkerton-era Weezer. “Couldn’t be more accurate,” Oisín agrees. Ironically, their sound didn’t really gel until the brothers were living apart — Oisín in Italy, Cian in Manchester. Hatchet Man is where they really came together. Their as-yet-untitled debut album is due in 2026.
“Whenever we rehearse, hundreds of people can hear it, but we try to be respectful.” Spearside records in Oisín’s home studio, and most neighbors, who’ve known the brothers since childhood, can hear their progression in real time. One neighbour recently told him: “I was actually listening the other day. It’s not bad. You’re getting better.”
