Sophie Lloyd is one of the hottest British solo guitar artists and the touring guitarist of Machine Gun Kelly since 2022. Back in 2011, Lloyd began her career making YouTube instrumentals, guitar reviews, and guitar technique videos. Her first time picking up a guitar was when she was nine years old and she hasn’t put it down since. Her incredible talent on the strings gained her international recognition as a rock and metal guitarist with millions of YouTube views. As a result in 2018, she was able to release her debut EP Delusions.
In just a few short years, Lloyd’s first ever solo album, Imposter Syndrome, was released in 2023 and made it to No. 3 on the UK rock chart. The album showcases her phenomenal talent and dedication to her craft. The album gained Lloyd a nomination for Best Breakthrough Album at the 2024 Heavy Music Awards, and her incredible solo “Do or Die” was voted by Guitar World as No. 2 of the best guitar solos of 2022.
Earlier this year, Lloyd embarked on her first headlining tour, selling out London’s Camden Underworld, and taking her solo career to new levels. You can expect to hear new music from Lloyd as she works on writing this year and making appearances at festivals around the world.
While on ShipRocked, we met up with Sophie Lloyd and caught up on the details of the MGK Tour, the longest she’s gone without playing guitar, and her dream collaborations.
I was in Cleveland with you when MGK played Browns Stadium for MGK Day a few years ago. What was your experience like that day?
That was genuinely one of the best days of my entire life. The whole city was just so excited for MGK to come to Cleveland and to play that show. That whole city was electric. We got there, we went to a restaurant and all the people of the city came out to say Hi. It was such a beautiful community feeling. That was my first time ever playing a stadium. It was packed out. It was so full. People I’d looked up to as a kid, like Avril Lavigne were there opening the show. It was insane.
MGK was doing a zip wire across the whole stadium, and I was so worried. I was on stage watching him go down. He smashed into the thing at the end, but it was just such an electric show. You could tell just that history was being made. Obviously, he’s a Cleveland boy, CLE till he dies and all that. It was such a beautiful experience for him. He was so emotional that day. We all were like, ‘When do we step foot into the stadium?’ We all just started crying our eyes out because it was just such an amazing full circle moment for him. We really, really felt that and we were so honored to be a part of it with him.
You’ve been touring all over the world on tour. Any hidden gems you found that you would tell people to visit?
One of my favorite places is Spokane, Washington. I don’t know what it’s called, but they have a big lake there. It’s the most beautiful place I have ever seen in my entire life. I want to go back there so badly. That’s definitely one of my favorite places.
Tell me about the process to write your solo record and how did you choose the collaborators?
We started writing just as COVID hit. We did a lot of the writing at home, and we’d find riffs or something that we like from different songs, and then we’d kind of mix them up; maybe reverse them or make them our own. Once we had a basic riff, the rest of the song wrote itself quite quickly. Then we’d add different layers and we kind of have an idea of the style we wanted and the artists we wanted to sing on it. We knew we wanted to write a song that would suit Matt Heafy, so slightly a more metal edge song that had like a really cool riff or something. Then we wanted a song that would fit Michael Starr, so a little more classic rock. Then one that fit Black Stone Cherry, so a bit more country rock.
I had a list of people I wanted, and I hadn’t asked them yet, but we kind of wrote for them and then I would just message them on Instagram with a link to the song and surprisingly, a lot of them said yes. They were all amazing and they all have such good creativity. They came back with incredible, incredible songs. It was such an amazing experience. They will provide the lyrics. They send over their vocal track and we’d change the backing track a little bit to fit it better, maybe send over some suggestions. It was still a collaborative effort. We were just back and forth on emails or Zoom, and then they’d send over the final thing and we’d add any extra solos or top lines to make it fit a little better. Then we had a song.
What are your must pack items for the road?
One of them is definitely bring your own pillow. My tour pillow saved my life. It’s the best thing to have your own pillow, especially when you’re on a bus. Those pillows are flat. They’re like a piece of paper. You need your own. It’s just like a comfort thing as well.
I brought one really weird thing that actually my fiance sent with me. I have a cat, and he brushed my cat and then wrapped her fur in clingfilm and then put it in my bag. It looked like I was smuggling drugs or something. It was just this weird white shit in a cling film packet. He was like, ‘Here you go.’ It was a really sweet thing. I carried it around with me everywhere in my bag. That’s an essential item. We’ve got Luna and Jacks. It was Luna’s fur, though.
What’s your craziest travel story?
There are a few different ones. One was just when we were getting on a flight, and we were driving to our airplane and all of our gear was just scattered all over the runway, and we had to go play catch up and find all of our gear and stuff. It was one of these charter jets. It was somewhere in Europe. We were just driving to our plane and we were like, ‘Wait, is that a guitar?’ We just had to run off and grab guitars and pedal boards that had just been left. That was definitely not ideal and a little bit worrying.
How long have you ever gone without playing guitar?
I’ve gone a while, like when I get back from tours. I don’t want to touch my guitar for a bit. You know how a gynecologist would come home to his wife and just be like, ‘If I see one more vagina.’ I’m kind of like that with a guitar after a tour.
What are your dream collaborations?
I would love to collab with some big names like Billie Eilish. I think she’s a genius. I’d love to do something with her. I don’t quite know how that would fit, but I think something like that would be really cool. I’m a big fan of British rappers as well, like Skepta and Stormzy. I think that might be something kind of cool and unique. From the rock world, I’d love more than anything to do something with Slash. He’s inspired pretty much my whole career. I think that would be a very full circle moment for me.
You did a session here at Music Experience on ShipRocked and you do guitar clinics. Why is that important to you?
My career goal is just to make 14-year old me proud, if you know what I mean. That girl was just picking up a guitar and loved music. My main thing for her is just making that girl proud. All I want to do is inspire that younger generation to pick up guitars. That’s why being with MGK has been so good. He has so many young female fans, so it’s cool for them to see someone that’s like them on stage. I just want to inspire people like people inspired me growing up and just show people that you can do it. You can achieve your dreams. I don’t have any musicians in my family. I didn’t know any growing up. You know, it’s all kind of done off my own back. You can do it if you put your mind to it.
What’s in store for 2025?
We’ve got some really exciting stuff actually. We’re going to be starting writing again, which I’m really, really excited for. We’re going to be hopefully doing some more collabs. I’d like to do some instrumental stuff as well.
I’m going to be getting married, which is going to be fun, in Oxfordshire, kind of near where I was born in the UK. That’s definitely something exciting.
I’d also love to start writing some music for video games and start scoring a little bit. I think that would be really interesting. We’re going to be taking our stuff live more. We’ve just started taking my solo album, Imposter Syndrome, live and we’re really excited to start just going all in with that.
Do you have any bucket list travel locations for your honeymoon?
I think after Download we’re probably going to go somewhere like Greece. We love Greece. I travel so much, I don’t want to get on another plane for like 12 hours. We just want to go somewhere close by and just sit by the beach and just be in the water forever.