Hongza

A toy guitar in north London

Hongza is Sam Hong, born in London to a Vietnamese-Chinese family and raised in the north of the city. He dates the start of it to childhood: seeing Busted on Top of the Pops, then being given a toy guitar that played riffs back at him, and spending afternoons in sunglasses pretending to be the band. The sound that eventually came out owes more to The 1975, Wolf Alice and JAWS, and the first working version of the project was not a solo name at all but DAZE, a shoegaze band he fronted before stepping out under his own.

The solo catalogue begins in 2021 with the Gen Z EP, a set of songs about maintaining an online persona and the pressure that comes with it. Two tracks did the early legwork: Accolades, written in lockdown, picked up airplay on Amazing Radio and a track-of-the-day slot from Intune Music, and Dream, Eat, Sleep took on modern dating. The press that followed came from small specialist outlets rather than the nationals, which is roughly where a self-releasing London guitar act sits in its first two years.

Writing it down because talking is harder

By late 2024 he was describing the next EP as a coming-of-age story in the literal sense — his struggle with identity as a Southeast Asian man, falling in love, his mental health, and dealing with toxic friends. He has been blunt about the method behind it: "It's almost always a trauma-dumping session when I write. I tend to do it when I've got a build-up of emotions because I'm terrible at communicating them." That EP became Coming Of Age, and its focus track, I Hate My Skin, got the video.

The record did more for his standing than anything before it. Rolling Stone UK called it a raw examination of identity, self-worth and love, a line his label and agent have both leaned on since. The darkest material around it came from the same place: of the single The Noise he said the preceding year had been one of the hardest of his life, that he had struggled with his mental health more than ever and felt at his lowest.

The same period produced She Changes The Weather, which he describes as a coming-of-age love story wrapped in dreamy, atmospheric guitars — the softer pole of a catalogue that also contains Cold Days and a good deal of volume.

Killabop, Larry Hibbitt, and taking the desk himself

On 18 December 2025 the new alternative label Killabop announced Hongza as a signing, with Coming Of Age and its lead single Lovesick as the first order of business and a headline show already booked for March. Lovesick arrived on 2 May 2026, produced by Larry Hibbitt, whose previous credits include Nothing But Thieves, Sea Girls and Sundara Karma. It is a long-distance song — the ache of being apart and the relief of the reunion — set to reverb-heavy guitar and insistent drums, and it came with a synth-led demo version given away to anyone on the label or artist mailing lists.

The more telling release landed on 29 July 2026: Coming Of Age (Deluxe), an eight-track edition on Killabop pairing the originals with alternative and acoustic reworks. Hongza produced and mixed the new versions himself, with guidance from Hibbitt and from guitarist George Curnick, and said afterwards that he threw himself into the deep end to do it and now feels confident enough to start producing for other bands. The alternative Lovesick trades acoustic drums for soft electronic beats and reverbed vocals; She Changes The Weather is pulled towards lo-fi synth pop.

Reviews split on how far that got him. Distorted Sound's Amber Denwood gave the deluxe 10/10, singling out Stuck In It for the way it moves between quiet guitar passages and heavy percussion, and I Hate My Skin for building from something intimate into a cathartic release. Out of Rage was cooler at 7/10, treating the set as a reimagining of familiar songs rather than a new statement. Release day itself was marked with a full-guestlist show at The Cinema at Selfridges, and the video for the alternative She Changes The Weather was shot at Alexandra Palace, finishing a narrative begun in the Lovesick alternative clip at a location tied to his relationship with his fiancée.

A circuit built out of support slots

The live history is the part of the CV that has grown fastest. He has shared stages with The Cribs and Bad Nerves, and the venue list runs beyond the UK: The New Colossus in New York, The Great Escape in Brighton, Supersonic in Paris and Effenaar in Eindhoven. Bookings in the UK and Europe go through Upsurge Artists.

The biggest night under his own name so far was at The Lexington in London on 4 March 2026, a 19:30 to 23:00 bill he billed as his largest headline show to date and framed in local terms: growing up in north London, he said, the place raised him, and he spent plenty of nights there in his early twenties. Onstage composure has been hard-won rather than natural — he has talked about stage anxiety and panic attacks before performances, and about relying on his band to get through them. The audience has a name of its own, the Reverb Crew.

What the next year is pointed at

Two threads run through everything he says about ambition. One is representation: he wants recognition for independent artists from the East and South East Asian diaspora, and has named playing Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City as the goal rather than a larger Western room. The other is the desk — having mixed the deluxe himself, he is now open to producing for other acts, which is the kind of sideways move that tends to keep a career going between records.

For now the schedule shows one date on sale: 2 November 2026 at EKKO in Utrecht, supporting Flawed Mangoes, tickets €13. It is a support slot in a 400-capacity Dutch club rather than a step up in size, and it fits the pattern of the past two years — records that get reviewed warmly in the specialist press, and a live footprint assembled one opening set at a time.