Alex Suarez – bass player of Cobra Starship have had such success lately in the commercial charts with hits such as ‘Good Girls Go Bad’ (teaming up with Gossip Girl’s Leighton Meester) and ‘You Make Me Feel’ (Sabi). Now they are coming to Brisbane for the Soundwave festival giving a bit of range, diversity and synthpop to the punk, metal, rock line-up that lays ahead. Here’s what QNews was able to discover when chatting to Alex.

Q: Australia has only really discovered this band recently yet you all have been around for a while. How did you all meet considering lead singer Gabe Saporta was apart of Midtown Band previously?

Alex: very interesting actually. So Ryland Blackington (guitarist) and I have known each other since highschool. So when I moved to New York, he had already been up here for a year and he heard that I moved here and we connected making music together. Separately, I ended up living upstairs from the drummer of Gabe’s old band (Midtown) and he’s the one that introduced us to Gabe and Gabe started his new project and Rob (the drummer) suggested us be in Gabe’s new band..so that how we joined basically. Victoria, we were looking on myspace.com for a Brooklyn keyboard player, female. Victoria came up and Gabe was like 'I want her.' I was like...'I think I know her..' and yeh, it turns out I knew her boyfriend at the time so I got in touch with her and then she joined our band.

Why female? A bit of diversity?

Yeh to mix it up a little ...I mean who wants to watch 4 to 5 dudes...

[laughs] I guess it depends on the demographic really Alex considering one of the themes of this magazine...

[laughs] Fair enough [laughs] but a girl can definitely spice things up a bit.

Will Victoria be taking on the female collaboration parts when we see you live?

Yes! She has been doing the Leighton Meester parts and the Sabi parts live which has been well she’s doing a really great job with it.

Really got to know Cobra Starship with your recent album _ yet you have released four albums previously. How has the evolution been?

Well you know the first album we weren’t really a band yet. Gabe started writing music with music producers and then he’s like ‘I’m gonna start putting a band together.’ Originally the first song by Kobra Starship ever was the song for the movie Snakes On A Plane- and that was before it was anything so everyone thought it would be this supergroup they all teamed up for this one song. So Gabe started a band while he was making a record – we came in at the very end of that and just started touring like crazy! During that first year we toured with Fall Out Boy and Patrick the lead singer produced our second record while on tour with them – we did it all on our laptops and then back home from tour we just ran tot the studio, finished recording it and then put out our second album. Third album is where we started to branch out a little for us – we started getting better at our own production and song writing and things like that. We kinda go into newer music – pop music had evolved. We gotta keep up with the times and think what's gonna be next. Its scary to take risks. We recorded our this album. Gabe got a sith on his vocal chord so he had vocal surgery which was really hard to do in the middle of making another record record and writing it. we don’t stick to one sound – we branch out into all kinds of music.

A common theme in your music is synth pop – considering Soundwave the festival you are featured at has a different theme to your music genre etc – one would ask are you aware of what you are getting yourselves into this February 26^th?

Yes! I’ve looked into and its funny – definitely look at the line up, it was a little intimidating – but I'm so incredibly excited regardless. I couldn’t believe it hen I saw it but I was like...’ok...lets go down to see Marilyn Manson and Slipknot...’ I am so excited. I cant wait to see all of those bands play.

Ok so I would imagine a few of our readers watch Gossip Girl. Your band was fortunate enough to collaborate with her for ‘Good Girls Go Bad’ – how was that experience?

Working with Leighton was awesome! She’s super nice and has a great sense of humour. We’re pretty obnoxious so we can get pretty obnoxious in those situations [laughs]. When we were shooting the video...we all got a little wasted...you gotta loosen up for those things you know...We had to figure out how to get loosen up somehow so we all got a little obnoxious and have fun with the whole thing and she was just rolling and running right along with it which is nice because some people just like ‘what are these guys doing? Who are these people?’ She wasn’t a huge diva, she was really nice, she did a good job on the track.