When Chai Met Toast Set for Sold-Out Show at NCPA Mumbai This Week

By their own admission, When Chai Met Toast’s recent EP LYTS has been slow to pick up on streaming, but banjo/charango player, guitarist and songwriter Achyuth Jaigopal is more than happy that they can take it out on the road. “In Bangalore, we did our biggest headline show to date,” he says about their September gig in the city.

According to the band, the LYTS promo tour has traveled 16 cities across four countries and sold about 15,000 tickets across the board. Now, they’re coming up to perform at the Tata Theatre in the NCPA, Mumbai on October 22nd and it’s likely to be a full house. It comes on the back of playing a similar indoor auditorium show at Chennai’s historied Music Academy and Jaigopal says they’ve done a few sit-down shows in the past, so they’re planning on a “similar set with the same energy” in Mumbai.

He adds about how the band sweats less on stage and gets to play to a wider age demographic. “And we often get the best sound and light fixtures – so sometimes we enjoy these gigs more than open air ones. Tata Theatre is a venue we’ve always wanted to perform at, and to sell out our first show there, we couldn’t ask for more from the fans. Really looking forward to it,” Jaigopal adds.

From the studio, When Chai Met Toast have progressed their sound through the four-track LYTS – which was produced in London by Richard Wilkinson, whose credits include everyone from Adele to Lianne La Havas to Kaiser Chiefs, Bombay Bicycle Club and Amy Winehouse. “There’s definitely his influence when it comes to the overall production, arrangement and stylistic choices like sounding and instrumentation […] Lyrically, we feel it’s quite different from our previous material, with a more direct, linear storytelling approach,” the guitarist says. In mid-September, the band worked with singer-composer and actor Farhan Akhtar on a single called “Take Me Home,” which came about through a mutual admiration between the artists. Jaigopal says Akhtar originally wanted to use their song “Firefly” for a teaser to his upcoming film and the conversation rolled from there. He adds, “We were obviously thrilled. Last year, Anurag (Farhan’s manager) shared with us a scratch of ‘Take Me Home,’ which Farhan wanted us to give a shot at producing. We got a month’s gap in between our international tours this year, so we spent some time in the studio, and tried to give the song a WCMT flavor. It all came together quite quickly. We met Farhan for the first time when we traveled to Mumbai to record his vocals.” Akhtar also joined When Chai Met Toast on stage at their previous Mumbai show in September.

Another big score came with “Mazey Mein,” a breezy Hindi song that felt like it was fully within the realm of the band’s signature sound, except now it was being transplanted in a film soundtrack, appearing in the movie Friday Night Plan. Aided by music supervisors Rahul Kannan and Sandesh Rao from Heard Music, Jaigopal counts it as a great experience. “Siddhant [Kaushal] also penned the lyrics beautifully. The film overall has a very indie soundtrack and we’re very happy to be part of it,” the guitarist adds.

Up next, there are a few festivals to wrap up this year and start the next – including the inaugural edition of Freebird Music Festival in Guwahati in December, plus a headline show in Singapore in November. Jaigopal adds, “There are some scratches we are developing in the studio for the next release. Next year, there’ll also be a few more international tours.”

Get more details about NCPA’s One World Many Musics fest here.