This Friday, February 27th, will see the release of the deluxe edition of Staring at the Sun, the 2024 sophomore full-length from Hotel Fiction, the Athens, GA-based duo of best friends Jade Long (piano, vocals) and Jess Thompson (guitar, vocals), who first met as students at the University of Georgia in 2018 and have been releasing music since 2019, with early singles coming to comprise much of 2021 debut LP Soft Focus. The expanded edition of Staring at the Sun features the album’s 10 original tracks in addition to acoustic takes on singles “Sunrise” and “Still Frozen,” along with two unreleased tracks, including Hotel Fiction’s most recent single, “Emmaline.”
Hotel Fiction have already toured alongside our phriends flipturn and SUSTO, in addition to Beach Fossils, The Beaches, and hey, nothing, and they’re gearing up for March dates supporting our buddies The Strumbellas, followed by an April run with The Moss, which will have them at our very own Brooklyn Bowl on April 23rd. Earlier this month, I got a chance to chat with Jade Long and Jess Thompson via Zoom, where they told me about their sophomore LP (a year and a half after its drop), “new-new” music that’s already in the works, and a handful of the most noteworthy things they’ve seen and learned on the road.
*Interview has been slightly edited for length and clarity.
Izzy Cihak: You’re gearing up to release the deluxe edition of your sophomore LP, Staring at the Sun. Deluxe editions feel like they’ve become more popular than ever, but I’m curious what led to you wanting to do the deluxe edition of this one in particular?
Jade Long: We had these songs we had written during the time of Staring at the Sun that we didn’t want to get lost forever, because there’s always new music that we’re working on. There were some songs that maybe didn’t make the cut of that record that we still thought were important to us at the time, and still are, so we thought it was worth making. We also imagined new versions. Like, we love to take a rock song and make it into a soft acoustic song and give it new light and new meaning, and hopefully new fans, too.
Izzy: This is a big question, but what have been some of the personal highlights of Hotel Fiction since the album dropped?
Jessica Thompson: That’s a great question! We got to go on a national headline tour…
Jade: International! We hit Canada!
Jessica: International headline tour… which was the first time we’d ever done the whole country. That was a really wonderful experience to be in places like Phoenix, Arizona or Canada [laughs], connecting with people that had listened to the record. And we’ve been working on new music pretty nonstop, which has been a really fun time. What else, Jade?
Jade: We took a lot of writing trips. Jess and I are also working on a new-new record, and it was kind of the first time — we’ve been a band for a while — that we could afford to like go rent a cabin for a couple of days and really focus on writing. We also did a small writing trip in San Francisco where we were cat sitting, so we didn’t have to even pay for a place!
Jessica: Classic barter system situation!
Jade: We had the cutest cats with us while we were working on music. I feel like some of those moments, where we were just creating, were some of my favorites. We also went on tour with our friends hey, nothing, which was very fun!
Izzy: Have you had any favorite reactions to the album?
Jade: I think it’s been really, really cool to hear everyone’s different favorites on the record and how they connect to different songs. Someone got a “Staring at the Sun” tattoo, with the chorus of the song, which is crazy.
Jessica: We’ve seen a couple more tattoos, which is always a bizarre experience and so cool [laughs].
Izzy: I’m assuming you’re still enjoying the album, considering you are rereleasing it, but what are some of your specific thoughts on the LP a year and a half on? How do you feel like it characterizes itself, compared to your debut and, in turn, the way that you’re looking at or approaching this new music that you’ve been working on? Sorry, that’s a lot…
Jessica: No! That’s a great question… Staring at the Sun took a lot of moments we were experiencing in transition, moments of strong emotions, and synthesized them into different songs. But I think we have, since writing the record, definitely widened our perspective of the world and grown a lot as people. With every record, the roots of the music get deeper and deeper. And not only have we grown as people, but we’ve grown a lot in our friendship. We sort of have this pipeline and there’s no filter now, we’re just kind of creating together, saying exactly what comes to mind, being entirely honest with each other about how we feel about anything we’re experiencing. I think we’re bringing that into the new music. And I think that that pipeline has been growing and widening with each record.
Izzy: You’re about to hit the road with The Strumbellas (who I love), followed by The Moss, when you’ll be here in Philly. How excited are you for these dates? Are you fans of the artists? I have to admit, this will be my first time seeing both you and The Moss.
Jade: I’ve honestly known of The Strumbellas since I was in high school, which is pretty crazy and surreal… We’re really, really excited! It’ll be our second tour out West, and the first time we went it was a headline tour, so we were in certain places playing to ten people [laughs]. And these venues are really fancy theatres, so it’s gonna be kind of a crazy feeling to be back in the same cities but leveling up in a way [laughs].
Izzy: You have toured with a lot of super cool bands. Are there any artists that you’d absolutely love to be on the road with, whether because you think your music would gel together really well, or you just love them and would love to be on the road with them?
Jessica: Actually, we’re always making really long lists of these artists [laughs]. There are so many… Some current ones would be Wolf Alice and boygenius, bands like that. Blondshell is another one… We made a vision board at the beginning of 2025, and we listed like 30 bands [laughs].
Jade: I agree with Wolf Alice, for sure. I love their latest record, and I think it would be a really good fit with the new music we’re making. And Madison Cunningham!
Izzy: I dig her! And I haven’t seen her since 2021, right after Lockdown ended. I don’t think she’s headlined here since then; she’s always opening for someone at like a shed or something…
Jessica: A shed [laughs]. Where’d she play in 2021?
Izzy: Johnny Brenda’s.
Jessica: Whoa, we’ve played there!
Izzy: Actually, S.G. Goodman opened for her.
Jessica: That’s so cool! We love S.G. Goodman, too!
Izzy: What can be expected of the live show when you’re here with The Moss at Brooklyn Bowl?
Jade: I think that we’re trying to incorporate some of our unreleased music, so it will be a more high-energy set. I mean, we have high energy, but like angsty rock. Especially with everything going on in the world right now, it feels really good to channel our anger through music and through a community. I feel like that is something we’ll continue to be doing on this next tour. I’ve heard that The Moss guys are really, really cool and also weird and out there in their artistry, so I feel like we’ll have a lot of fun feeding off of that and just gettin’ weird, too!
Izzy: Yeah! That’s always important that you get along with the people you’re on the road with.
Jade: It’s like an ecosystem; you don’t always mesh…
Jessica: When you’re touring with another band, you’re like these two ecosystems traveling side-by-side that also cross over, so the harmony is important, for sure!
Izzy: You were talking a bit about this earlier, but you’ve played a lot of different types of venues… At this point, do you have a favorite type of setting to play?
Jessica: I think that we enjoy most of the venues we play. I think we’ve been lucky to get to play some incredible venues. And we’re always pleasantly surprised at how kind and welcoming the staff is, and that’s no matter the size. I think our music is suited to those intimate enough, but still danceable, venues, like a 300-400-cap venue, where the energy of the crowd can get huge if it’s packed. If we’re playing a big theatre with seats, you can kind of feel the taper in that energy, even though everyone’s still really engaged. Kind of similar with our feelings on opening versus headlining, with big versus small venues there’s a lot of pros and cons to each, so it’s nice to kind of get to ride on that spectrum.
Izzy: You have spent a lot of the past half-decade on the road… Have you developed any significant routines or rituals to keep yourselves like sane, healthy, and having fun while constantly being on the go?
Jade: It’s definitely really hard to do that on tour [laughs]. In order to stay healthy, unfortunately, we can’t go out too much. We choose one day of the week, if it’s the last show day or if it’s a day we know we’re going to be in New York City, and we want to have fun there… Just trying to eat clean as much as we can, not stop at fast food, even though it’s really hard on the road. Drink water! Everyone needs to drink water! If we need to stop every 30 minutes to pee, that’s fine! No shame [laughs]. We leave really early, so we’re never stressed about getting to the venues on time. Personally, journaling and trying to find some alone time is hard, but important.
Jessica: I think my favorite ritual we have is every night after the show we’ll do this thing called “High, Low, Kudos” with the whole band. We’ll say our high of the day, our low of the day, and then give a kudos — usually in the van — to somebody that helped in some way, maybe helped you load your gear or maybe you were having a bad day and they bought you a coffee or something. We also have a special reserved “Fuck You,” if anyone needs to say, “Fuck You!” to that random guy [laughs]. We can say that in the van. It’s a nice way at the end of the night to reconnect with each other before we go to bed and start another day. And I think it helps us feel heard, too. If we’ve had a hard day, it’s a safe space to say that.
Izzy: This is a little random, but I know that you also do all of the visual elements of Hotel Fiction yourselves. So, I’m curious what you would consider to be some of your most significant visual influences specifically related to the band.
Jade: Wow! That’s a really, really good question… It’s hard to pinpoint one particular thing, because we take inspiration from everything from books in a bookstore to looking out at the sky and the clouds. There’s so many great artists out there, I think Pinterest is a great place to find inspiration. Our local art museums are great, too. My mom’s an artist, so I’m very inspired by her and her art. With every album cycle, it is very inspired by the music, too. Every era of our band feels so visually different. Taking words from our songs and the overall vibe of how it makes us feel and then channeling that into the artwork has always been something that feels right and necessary. We’re about to start that process for the new-new music that we’re working on, and I’m very, very excited about it.
Izzy: Finally, what’s next for you, after these dates wrap? You keep mentioning new music that’s somewhat along the way, at least enough to be playing it live. What are you hoping and planning for the rest of 2026? Anything you’re especially excited about, or any kind of tentative dates you can drop?
Jessica: No dates necessarily, but we are really excited to be releasing new music soon! I think that we’re entering this new era — Jade was touching on this — of maybe more rock-heavy, experimental music. A classic thing that happens when we’re writing an album is we end up touching on a lot of different genres, sometimes accidentally. So, I think we’re just really, really excited to get to finish that and, like Jade was saying, finish building the world around that music — the videos, the artistic visuals, the style of it — and then hopefully get to bring that to live shows and the people that’ve heard it. We’re just really excited about creating more music.
*Get your tickets here.
