On tour
Every date the ticketer lists, worldwide · venue time
Listen
Top tracks on Spotify · SoundCloud
The profile · researched 23 October 2026
Five LIPA students, a locked studio door and the biggest tour yet
Girl Group are a British-Norwegian five-piece from Liverpool who turned being shut out of their course's studios into two self-run EPs; in autumn 2026 they are closing out their largest headline tour, with a Liverpool homecoming and a Norwich date still on sale.
Spite, LIPA and a studio door that did not open
Girl Group started as a grievance. Katya Birkeland, Lily Christlow, Thea Gundersen, Mia Halvorsen and Maria Tollisen met as students at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts — four Norwegians and Christlow, who is from Bridlington on the Yorkshire coast. The account they have given consistently since is that the men on their course booked the studios and went off to work in them together, and the women were not invited. 'We were pissed off at not being included when the boys went to the studio,' as they summarised it to Rough Trade. The band was the reply.
The name was chosen to be read two ways at once. It captures, in their words, 'so perfectly what we are, everything that we do is centred around women but then also that sense of playfulness and togetherness' — a term the music industry has historically applied to acts assembled by men, taken over by five people who write, produce and direct their own work. Halvorsen and Tollisen already knew each other from Oslo. Speaking to Boot in February 2024, the group described forming out of ordinary studio sessions rather than any plan, and living together: 'It's a girlhood! We argue like we're family and we love each other like we're family too.'
Their first release, 'Life Is Dumb', came out in 2023, and the band's debut dates from that year. The stated ambition at that point was modest and specific — to get down, as they put it, 'the mundanity of our lives and the absurdity of living a 20 year old female existence all at once'.
Learning to record themselves
The early singles were made cheaply and close to home. 'Lil's Room', released in 2024, was written in a bedroom rather than a studio, which the band credited with taking the pressure off; its guitar part was recorded as a voice memo and looped. Tollisen has co-produced most of the group's material, and there is no designated frontperson — all five sing, write and play, which is unusual enough in a pop five-piece to shape everything from the arrangements to the stage layout.
The common reference point is Wet Leg, the one band all five agreed on early. Beyond that they cite Lily Allen, Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan and Charli XCX's 2024 album 'Brat', and they have named Charli XCX as the collaborator they would most want. The method is stricter than the influences suggest: women are prioritised at every stage of the process, the videos have been shot with all-female crews, and the band describe the point of that as building an environment that centres unapologetic femininity rather than as a marketing line. A BBC Radio 6 Music live session followed.
The songwriting approach is deliberately disguised. 'By wrapping big, heavy topics up in catchy little pop songs, we make them accessible to those who perhaps aren't as interested or don't know as much about feminism,' they told DIY in February 2026. The members also point to the gap between Norwegian understatement and a UK scene that rewards being loud as the thing that pushed them towards the bolder version of themselves.
'Think They're Looking, Let's Perform' and its older sister
The debut EP, 'Think They're Looking, Let's Perform', arrived on 20 June 2025: six tracks, released independently, including 'Yay! Saturday'. BRICKS, writing on 28 July 2025, read it as a record of Gen Z girlhood and described the sound as a mix of dance, drum and bass and crunchy indie — a fair summary of a band who are more rhythm section than guitar band when it matters.
'She Goes' followed in November 2025, with CLASH describing a track that set confessional lyrics about female admiration against a pulsating backing. The second EP, 'Little Sticky Pictures', came out on 20 March 2026 via Boys Boys Boys, and was the group's first vinyl release — issued as a double A-side with the debut, so that both EPs sit on one record. Halvorsen called it 'the older sister to our last EP'. The seven tracks cover, by the band's own account, identity, girlhood, desire and community, and include 'Rage Song', 'She Goes', 'Man-made Girl Groups' and 'Flink Pike', the last built around the Norwegian expectation of being a good, capable girl.
Two singles did the heavy lifting. 'SuperDrug' is about hormonal contraception, written from shared experience: 'each of us, as well as most women we know, have had terrible experiences with hormonal contraception.' 'Food Shopping' appeared on the vinyl before its digital release, with a video directed by Birkeland that uses footage of the members' families in Norway and Scarborough. The New Feminist, reviewing in March 2026, described infectious dance beats underpinning lyrics about the joy and the daily frustrations of being a young woman now. Release week was spent in record shops: Rough Trade in-stores in London on 16 March, Nottingham on 17 March and Liverpool on 18 March 2026.
Reading, Øya and a year of festivals
The live reputation has outrun the discography. In July 2025 the band opened for Olivia Dean in Paris — a set Music Musings & Such, writing on 8 November 2025, called explosive — and they also supported her in London. At Reading and Leeds in 2025 they drew the largest crowd of any act on the BBC Introducing stage, which remains the single most quoted fact about them.
Norway recognised them first in award terms: they won Urørt of the Year at NRK P3's Urørt in 2025, the competition that functions as the country's main emerging-artist platform. The same year brought a nomination for Best New Pop at the Notion New Music Awards.
The 2026 festival run was split between the Netherlands and Norway before the headline dates began — Down The Rabbit Hole on 3 July, Øya in Oslo on 15 August and Pstereo in Trondheim on 21 August. The autumn tour, their largest to date, opened in Amsterdam on 23 September and ran through Germany, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Austria and Italy alongside the UK dates.
Where they stand, October 2026
The UK leg of that tour has been the clearest measure of where they are. Oxford's Bullingdon on 13 October was followed by two nights at Queen of Hoxton in London on 14 and 15 October, both sold out and billed as their biggest London headline shows, then a 14-and-over matinee at Colours Hoxton on 17 October and Edinburgh's Cabaret Voltaire on 20 October. The European end of the run has been less tidy: Songkick lists the Brussels date at Le Botanique as postponed, and shows at Chelsea in Vienna on 18 November and Circolo Magnolia in Segrate on 21 November as cancelled. Pitchfork Music Festival Paris remains on the schedule for early November.
Two dates are currently on sale. The homecoming at O2 Academy 2 in Liverpool on 30 October closes the UK run, and Epic Studios in Norwich on 27 January 2027 is the first date of the following year.
There is still no album. Three and a half years in, the catalogue is two short EPs, a run of singles and one piece of vinyl — which is less a gap than a description of how the band work, releasing in small batches they can produce and shoot themselves. The next obvious step is a full-length, and nothing has been announced.
The show, now
A Girl Group headline show in autumn 2026 is a club show built on a deliberately small catalogue: two EPs — six tracks and seven — plus singles including 'Life Is Dumb', 'Lil's Room', 'Yay! Saturday', 'She Goes', 'SuperDrug' and 'Food Shopping', so the set is short and front-loaded rather than career-spanning, with 'Rage Song', 'She Goes' and 'Flink Pike' the material most written about. There is no frontperson — all five sing, write and play — and the band have described building the stage around stations holding different instruments so players move between them, aiming at something theatrical rather than a line of musicians behind a lead vocalist. Production is self-made and so is the visual side, with all-female crews on the videos. No support acts were named in the tour announcement, and no setlists have been logged publicly for the run. The audience evidence is in the room sizes and the age limits: the largest BBC Introducing crowd at Reading and Leeds in 2025, two sold-out nights at Queen of Hoxton on 14 and 15 October 2026, a 14-plus matinee added at Colours Hoxton on 17 October for fans too young for the evening shows, and front rows of young women who, as coverage of the tour put it, feel seen. Reviewers have been consistent on the same point: Music Musings & Such called their Paris support set for Olivia Dean explosive, and the recorded material's dance-weighted rhythm section is what the live show leans on. The run closes at O2 Academy 2 in Liverpool on 30 October 2026, with Epic Studios in Norwich on 27 January 2027 to follow.
Researched from en.wikipedia.org · blog.roughtrade.com · diymag.com · readdork.com · readdork.com · thenewfeminist.co.uk · totalntertainment.com · songkick.com
Pictures
Photographs from Wikimedia Commons, credited
Ezekiel. · Public domain
CHR!S · CC BY-SA 4.0
Spice_Girls_2008_01.jpg: Eric Mutrie from Canada derivative work: Frcm1988 (talk · CC BY 2.0
Flavia Colonnese · CC BY-SA 3.0
Raph_PH · CC BY 2.0
Raph_PH · CC BY 2.0
Gerihalliwell.jpg: https://www.flickr.com/people/emutree/ derivative work: Taber · CC BY 2.0
Bruce from Sydney, Australia · CC BY 2.0
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)