The Local Train: 'We Never Believed In Putting Something Out Just for the Sake of Staying Relevant'

The trio recently put out ‘Tu Hai Kahaan’ with veteran pop voice Lucky Ali for the movie ‘Do Aur Do Pyaar’

- ANURAG TAGAT

With the release of rock band The Local Train’s “Tu Hai Kahaan” with pop veteran Lucky Ali on vocals, they were back on people’s feeds after at least a couple of years away from the limelight following the exit of their vocalist-guitarist Raman Negi.

The song was part of the newly-released movie soundtrack Do Aur Do Pyaar, but was originally created in around 2022. There hadn’t been much in terms of news from The Local Train’s camp, but bassist Ramit Mehra, guitarist Paras Thakur and drummer Sahil Sarin tell Rolling Stone India that there were very much signs of life. Thakur says over a Zoom call, “We do understand from the outside perspective that there was radio silence for people. But internally, we never stopped. It was never like there was a decision to [think], ‘Do we get back to this and all?’ It was never that. We were constantly working, but we needed to get a little more perspective.”

Thakur says the band had been active for so long that they did want to get back to it with an intent to “serve something” and come from a place that they connected with. To that end, The Local Train were never too far apart – even though Thakur now stays in a remote village (“I live deep inside an apple orchard on the slope of a mountain,” he says) in North India and Mehra and Sarin moved back to Chandigarh.