When: 10th July 2025
Where: Upcote Farm, Withington, near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England
Despite living locally this is my first time at 2000trees and straight away it is impressive. Founded in 2007, 2000trees is an independent rock festival focussing on underground rock acts, and it’s loud! If there were any doubt about this, you just have to look around to see that Marshall (as in amps) are the main sponsor. The festival appears well laid out and well run, bands start and finish on time and there is no sound overlap between stages – other festivals could learn a lot from getting these basics right. Presumably with Marshall being the main sponsor the PA systems are provided by them, explaining the quality, and volume, of the sounds from each of the five music stage areas and the additional Word stage.
2000trees isn’t my usual genre of festival but hey I’m open-minded and keen to hear new music, I’ve heard of very few of the bands performing which is lure in itself. One of the first bands to catch my attention is unpeople, on the main stage who perform with an energy that matches the blazing temperatures. Despite knowing none of their material their melodies, harmonies and catchy songs infiltrate and clearly get the crowd going, with plenty of crowd surfing going on.
With music spread over five stages there are too many bands to see and not knowing most of them means I stumble across a rich assortment. Snayx bring their punk vibe to the main stage with standouts being ‘Strut’, ‘Work’ and an exhilarating cover the Prodigy’s ‘Breath’ whilst Puppy, over on the Axiom stage, bring more of a stoner-grunge-rock feel to their full-on, and deafeningly loud, set. They draw a decent crowd who clearly love them.
Kid Kapichi, playing their second set of the festival, take on theAxiom stage, and are a riot. With tracks like ‘Party at No.10’ and ‘Rob the Supermarket’ they take the energy levels up a notch. Next up comes Pvris (pronounced Paris) who bring more melody and a more pop-vibe to the main stage. Led by Lynn Gunn the band are returning to their roots and play much of 2004’s White Noisealbum. Unsurprisingly, it is the big singles like ‘My House’ and ’Holy’ that get the audience bouncing and singing along, despite the dark lyrical undertones.
2000trees have held their nerve over Thursday’s headline act, Kneecap. When the band were first announced as headliners, having played the festival twice before, they were riding the wave of a successful movie. As the festival date has got closer the band have become more notorious with calls for their shows to be cancelled, most of their shows the week proceeding 2000trees were cancelled. Credit to festival organisers for not succumbing and the band arrive to huge cheers, Irish and Palestinian flags being waved across the huge crowd and the crowd-surfing we’ve seen so far today appearing like a simple warm up for the next 90 minutes.
From the moment they enter the stage, with screens making it clear their views on the “genocide” taking place in Palestine and the UK governments role in this, the place erupts in a fireball of energy, passion and riotous fun. The band tear through ‘It’s Been Ages’ and ‘Sayonara’ early on but it’s the between song banter that seems to really engage the crowd, whether it’s a diss against Keir Starmer or a rant about recent terrorism charges. The crowd love them the likes of ‘Your Sniffer Dogs Are Shite’ and ‘Finian Cunts’ prove massive sing-alongs- with tri-colour flags a waving and a clever tricolour of smoke flares from audience members.
They could’ve cancelled, or been cancelled, or played it safe but they stick to what they do and full credit to them. Facing terror charge in court this summer the future looks uncertain for them, but they embrace this as activists, refusing to bow to the political pressure on them and the audience love them all the more for this.
As the first day of the festival draws to a close, I’m left trying to make sense of the power of what I’ve just experienced. Whether you like the anarchic trio’s views and punk/hop-hop mash-up, with a large dose of humour, you can’t deny the power of their performance, and this will surely go down as one of 2000trees best headline sets.
