Artist Development
July 29, 2026
Florence Road
Who would have thought teens covering songs in garages would become such a wholesome trend online? Since 2024, teenagers doing exactly that have flooded the algorithm. “The kids are alright,” and “teens are teening again” read the comments section. But for Irish quartet Florence Road, this wasn't just a trend: it was the catalyst that propelled them to almost one million TikTok followers, and a key part of how their story began.
The all-female band, who hail from Bray, Co. Wicklow, formed the band while in school. Fronted by the magnetic vocal powerhouse Lily Aron, with best friends Ailbhe Barry on bass, Emma Brandon on guitar, and Hannah Kelly on drums.
Initially formed in 2019 with their name taken from the street their school was situated on, they began performing shows at lunchtime.
The group first gained attention posting covers on TikTok. As early as 2022, they had a grainy recording of a lunchtime cover of Olivia Rodrigo’s “jealousy, jealousy” go viral online, quickly garnering over seven million views.
They asked a friend to sneak a recording, a subversion of the school’s strict no-phone policy.
They soon perfected their own signature video style using a fisheye lens, making them instantly recognisable and memorable on the platform.
Since then, they have had almost 40 cover videos surpass one million views, satiating their new audience while they worked on their own material in Lily’s dad’s shed.
Despite the risk of being typecast as a cover band, this strategy helped them build and maintain anticipation and a devoted following online before releasing any original music.
In a digital age where emerging artists struggle to capture and sustain attention, Florence Road had already solved one of the industry’s biggest challenges: finding an engaged audience before their debut.
Despite any skepticism that their online virality and goofy, light-hearted videos may have drawn, Florence Road approached their craft with remarkable professionalism offline. Their live show had always been their raison d’etre, and the industry quickly noticed.
Ironically, their first major breakthrough didn’t come from their online presence, but their IRL marketing - a paper flyer. Their future band manager stumbled across their flyer while needing to book a support slot for Irish band The Academic, landing Florence Road their first major live opportunity.
It’s rare to see bands this decade having overnight success or a meteoric rise to fame. The most popular bands right now including Geese, Wunderhorse and Fontaines D.C. all formed almost a decade ago and have been instrumentalists for even longer. But it’s hard to see Florence Road’s ascent as anything other than a whirlwind.
One publication gave them a cover story when they had only one released single, and shortly after finishing school, they signed a record deal with Warner Music.
A particular artist that gave the band early recognition was none other than Olivia Rodrigo, who praised one of their early covers of her song “Obsessed.” Little did the girls know that they would be heading to LA to work with her producer Dan Nigro (resulting in the stellar song “Caterpillar”), to later open for some of her GUTS world tour dates the following summer.
After a six-month writing block, they curated a mixtape, Fall Back, released in June 2025, described as a bundle of songs that reflect a budding band finding their sound.
The mixtape is an eclectic set of songs showcasing possible directions they could take their sound, be it pure pop hits of “Goodnight” and “Break the Girl,” Cranberries-esque indie rock “Caterpillar,” angsty rager “Figure it Out,” or the raw standout debut hit “Heavy,” that put them on the map.
Their influences and tastes bleed through, pulling from various rock sub-genres such as Fleetwood Mac, Sam Fender, Beabadoobee, and The Cure. Vocally, frontwoman Lily Aron is a captivating hybrid of Olivia Rodrigo, Wolf Alice frontwoman Ellie Rowsell, and even Irish legend and The Cranberries lead Dolores O’Riordan.
The band really come into their own with their live show, where their commitment and dedication to their craft is shown. This has resulted in an impressive run of shows in 2025 including support slots for Sombr, Wolf Alice, and The Last Dinner Party, quickly acquainting them with arenas and crowds of tens of thousands.
Less than a year later, they further distilled their sound on their EP Spring Forward, released in March 2026. Leaving behind the stylistic experimentation of Fall Back, Florence Road fully embrace their heavier rock influences across four songs that are all killer, no filler.
Conceptually, the EP is far more cohesive, exploring different stages of love with greater emotional depth. Lyrically, instrumentally and vocally this EP is leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessor, with the band maturing at an alarming rate.
A personal favourite that has gained considerable attention recently is “Hanging Out To Dry”, which cleverly captures the denial we can experience while in love, illustrated through a series of relatable oxymorons.
Called you Over? Are you over? /
Trust me, I’m not falling / Don’t trust me, I might fall in
Leave me hanging out to dry / yeah im hanging around
“Miss” is a career-best hit that transports the listener into the emotional wreckage of heartbreak, with its depressive, exasperated opening chords:
Not just when I'm alone
Not just when I haven't got you except inside my phone
We come to poignantly learn that the obsessive longing for an ex doesn’t just occupy her loneliest hours, but seeps into even her happiest moments.
It's when I'm havin' a blast
Twirling around in my dress
And you'd say that I'm lookin' my best
As the song becomes increasingly charged, it shape shifts into a claustrophobic meltdown.
Now there's ghosts in my kitchen
I'm not even listenin'
Swear I can feel you in the air
If one song encapsulates Florence Road's identity, it's "Miss". It reflects the duality that runs throughout Florence Road's music: tenderness and vulnerability existing alongside rage and catharsis.
In less than four minutes, it oscillates between a tender vulnerable ballad and an angsty garage-rock rager.
On “Rabbits Can Swim,” they expand their sound with a stunning piano ballad which touches on themes of codependency and obsession. Lyrics such as 'follow you like a dog' and 'tell me you’re sure, tell me you need me' sum up the codependency and obsession felt. The desire to be deeply understood and reciprocated 'read different books, but be on the same page,' is terrifically put.
Concluding the emotional journey of the EP is “Storm Warnings,” where clarity is reached upon hindsight. The closing track asks whether the warning signs were always there, or whether love simply made them easier to ignore. Only once the relationship ends does she finally see it for what it was, rather than the romanticised future she imagined.
Despite Spring Forward only being a few months old, they haven’t slowed down.
Their creative process has produced a huge amount of songs, with forty in the bank, half a dozen unreleased included in their setlist, and several they have earmarked for their highly anticipated debut album. It still feels like everything to date has just been the test run, with the band admitting they don’t know what their next release will sound like as they are still exploring and refining their sound.
Florence Road are part of a wider wave of post-pandemic female-fronted bands reviving rock alongside acts such as The Last Dinner Party - but their trajectory feels singular. Two years ago their monthly Spotify listeners sat at 8,000; since then, it’s soared to 2.4 million.
For Florence Road, it’s no longer a matter of if, but when. Every support slot seems to end the same way: winning over an audience that hadn’t heard of them an hour earlier. With such a charismatic frontwoman and all four members being incredible instrumentalists, it’s easy to forget they’ve only been doing this a few years. In an industry where most artists, particularly bands, spend the better part of a decade earning their moment, Florence Road are proving themselves quite the exception. The question is no longer whether they will break through - it’s how far they can go.
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