• 2013-

  Mike KerrVocals and bass

  Ben ThatcherDrums
• Royal Blood is a rock duo consisting of lead vocalist and bass guitarist Mike Kerr and drummer Ben Thatcher. The pair, who hail from West Sussex in southern England, first met when they were schoolboys. They briefly were in the same quartet, Flavour Country, in which Kerr played keyboards and the keytar and Thatcher guitar. Thatcher described them to Studife as "a really bad rock-punk band."
• Kerr spent a couple of years in Australia before deciding to come home to the UK in 2013. Royal Blood was birthed when Thatcher picked him up from the airport and they decided to form a band on the journey home.
• The bass-and-drums pair declared to Mojo they never considered adding additional members to their unorthodox setup. "We didn't want anyone else in the band," Kerr told the magazine. "There was no one else that would really fit in. We could play these same songs we have with more members, and it would be a similar band, but you'd miss out on some of the ways we connect, our chemistry."
  
  The frontman added: "The way I managed to engineer the sound was a free pass for it to be just me and Ben. Being in a band isn't easy. You can't build it on distortion sound alone."
• Ben Thatcher has cited the Red Hot Chili Peppers' stickman Chad Smith as influential. He told Q magazine: "Blood Sugar Sex Magik by Red Hot Chilli Peppers was the first album I really enjoyed drumming along to. It's one of the first albums I was introduced to after I started drumming, and it's really shaped how I drum now."
• Royal Blood took home the prize for Best British Group at the 2015 Brit Awards. The band also won Best New Band and Best Live Band at that years' NME Awards.

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