Hard Life Tickets

hard life return in 2025 with a UK headline tour in support of new album, onion, seeing the band headline some of the UK's most iconic venues including London’s O2 Academy Brixton, Manchester Academy, and Nottingham's Rock City.

As anyone who has fallen for the charms of hard life’s music over the eight years can attest, their catalogue displays singer Murray Matravers’ talents as one of the most astute young songwriters in the UK. That journey has featured a pair of No. 2-charting albums and culture-clashing collaborations with the likes of Arlo Parks, Kevin Abstract, and FINNEAS. hard life enjoyed star-making turns on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury and festivals across the globe, as well as multiple sold-out headline tours that have hit the highs of London’s iconic Alexandra Palace and even arenas in their native East Midlands.

From its eye-catching title to its comic accompanying artwork, new album onion suggests a directness, and take-it-or-leave-it honesty, that make the hard life of 2025 feel as much of a welcome return as an exhilarating fresh start. From Matravers and guitarist Lewis Alexander Berry’s voice acting on ‘are you sti11 watching?’ to the romantic frisson of ‘y3llow bike’ or the warped nylon guitars that drive ‘othello’ forward, its moments of soul-searching are balanced with levity, warmth, and curiosity. Outside of recording the album, Murray’s time in the city was filled with stillness and play: he got lost in films such as Perfect Days to Mysterious Skin, while he and Taka created a calm, imaginative studio environment together through which the album shed its skin.

Accompanied by a new raw but refined cinematic aesthetic, onion is hard life setting off on that next great adventure (the kind only possible, perhaps, when your life blows up). And having spent his young career matching the unpredictable with unvarnished positivity, amidst breakups and breakthroughs - and for legal reasons, all things easy and hard - life seemingly has a way of disrupting Murray Matravers’ best laid plans. Here is British pop’s underdog, with added bite.