Ten years, a number of releases, numerous rehearsals and a whole lot of songs later, The Yellow Diary are nonetheless figuring issues out. And that could be precisely what has saved the band going. What began in 2015 as a gaggle of musicians jamming collectively has grown into one in every of India’s most acquainted unbiased music acts. Over time, Rajan Batra, Himonshu Parikh, Harshvardhan Gadhvi, Sahil Shah and Stuart DaCosta have constructed a sound that refuses to remain in a single field, whereas their audiences have grown from just a few acquainted faces in Mumbai to packed rooms throughout the nation.
Now, the band is taking that journey on the street with its largest India tour but. The tour is available in help of their debut album, In Case We Neglect, launched in November 2025. The nine-track album options collaborations with Lisa Mishra and Shilpa Rao and brings collectively the band’s acquainted emotional storytelling with a sound that displays the place they’re at the moment.
When indie music stopped being a small nook
The Yellow Diary got here collectively when unbiased music in India was nonetheless typically clubbed below the “various” label. The scene was smaller, the alternatives fewer and the hole between indie and mainstream was way more apparent.
“I believe after we began jamming, we have been nonetheless thought of an alternate music platform as an entire,” the band tells Hindustan Occasions. A decade later, the business has modified quickly. Impartial music has change into a a lot bigger ecosystem, with artists shifting freely between genres and discovering area in movies, Bollywood, tv and mainstream popular culture. “That’s the bridge that we form of actually crossed throughout this time,” they clarify.
Even the common-or-garden jam room has had an improve. “Jam rooms have gotten rather a lot higher,” the band jokes. “They odor higher, they appear good.”
That takes them again to their early rehearsal area, which conjures up just a little nostalgia — adopted virtually instantly by panic about what they’ve simply stated. It’s a small second, but it surely says a lot about their journey. The band can now giggle on the areas, struggles and compromises of its early years as a result of these years are firmly behind them.
Mumbai began it. India turned dwelling.
For The Yellow Diary, one of many largest adjustments has been seeing audiences outdoors Mumbai develop alongside them. Requested which crowd shocked them most throughout the In Case We Forgot touring cycle, Rajan instantly picks Melbourne.
“We have been probably not anticipating something, and after we went there, it felt like we have been enjoying to a house floor,” he says.
But when one metropolis stays emotionally particular, it’s Mumbai. “On a extra sentimental sense, I really feel like Mumbai was the primary metropolis that ever gave us the chance to carry out. So it can all the time really feel like dwelling irrespective of the place we come from,” the band says.
There was a time when Mumbai was additionally the one place the place they might rely on a crowd: “Again within the day, Bombay was one of many solely cities the place we felt like we might carry out and folks would flip up and it could be like a loopy gig as a result of it was our dwelling turf,” they recall. “However through the years now each metropolis has actually began exhibiting up.”
That’s maybe the most important praise a touring band can obtain. Mumbai might have began the story, but it surely now not owns it. “We really feel like we discovered a TYD household throughout the nation.”
The largest tour, with just a little little bit of every little thing
The upcoming In Case We Neglect India Tour is the band’s largest but, taking them throughout 15 cities and bringing collectively a decade’s value of music.
For the primary time, all 9 songs from In Case We Neglect can be carried out as a part of the identical reside set. They may sit alongside songs that followers have adopted for years, together with Marz, Buniyaad, Roz Roz, Kahe Kahe, Rab Raakha and Mujhe Mere Naam Se.
However do not anticipate a easy album playback on stage. “Plenty of new songs within the set,” they tease. “We all the time attempt to create a really new, contemporary vitality each time we go onto our [tour].”
The itinerary consists of Bengaluru, Gurgaon, Jaipur, Indore, Bhopal, Nagpur, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkata, Chandigarh and Dehradun, amongst different cities.
For a band that has spent years touring, maintaining issues contemporary has change into virtually as vital because the songs themselves. The concept is to not recreate the album note-for-note, however to make the reside model its personal expertise.
Ten years later, the story remains to be being written
There’s a sure irony in a band known as The Yellow Diary consistently speaking about what it remembers. Outdated songs, forgotten studio classes, early gigs, altering audiences and the variations of themselves they’ve left behind all maintain discovering their method into the dialog.
In Case We Neglect brings collectively the place The Yellow Diary are at the moment, whereas the reside exhibits convey the remainder of the journey with them. [Full interview to be out soon on YouTube.]