Meet Hailie Hay of Forrest
I grew up in the Bay Area, spent some time away, and came back in late 2018 from a solo tour when was offered a show spot. I wanted to find a good group of players to back me up– with one week to prep. Absolutely no one else besides three friends of mine (now the Forrest boys) came to mind. We came together quickly, honestly a bit stressed out due to my last-minute proposal. Somehow, the boys still rocked the dang show. Everything felt truly right from there on out. That night, we became Forrest.
We’d all been playing music together in some capacity for the better part of 10 years when we came together as a band, so it’s been a road travelled fairly frequently and reverently. Michael and Levi were in pop-punk/hardcore bands together from when they were super young– 14 to 18. Levi and I made music from 16 and on as well, sometime both becoming 2 parts of a 6 member band called Brotherly. Levi and I seemed to always create weird bits of what we felt was crazy musical magic each time we even informally got together (I had moved to LA and Boston for awhile, so our sessions got sporadic for a few years), and Manu always hung out, created, and collaborated with Levi and Michael throughout the same period. We were all in college outside of the Bay Area between 2013 and 2018, so I suppose the only struggle was that, until recently, we all hadn’t been in the same place at the same time.
Success, I think I can safely say for all of us, isn’t really defined by anything except our ability to reach listeners in the way that our favorite artists/musicians reached us when we were younger. If we can offer some kind of helping hand through hard times, or become the soundtrack for the good ones, that’s enough for us.
