ILA

ILA is a Belgian band built around singer and guitarist Ilayda Cicek, with Cas Kinnaer on drums, Sam Smeets on bass and Mattias Stynen on guitar. The band broke through in 2022 after winning Studio Brussel’s De Nieuwe Lichting with “Leave Me Dry”, which spent three weeks at number one in De Afrekening. The mini-album *Felt* followed that year, before debut album *Ayna* arrived through PIAS in 2024. ILA’s music is driven by contrast: restraint against impact, melody against noise, control against collapse. With *Motherland*, the first album written by the full four-piece lineup, the band pushes that tension further. Recorded at Hackney Road Studios in London with producer Mikko Gordon, the record is broader, more layered and more direct than what came before. At its core, ILA is a band that writes from lived experience without turning it into decoration. The songs deal with love, loss, distance, change and the pressure of having to rebuild. Nothing is softened for effect. The music stays physical, precise and recognisably theirs.