The newly formed foursome have been together about a year and already supported international acts.

The musos have just finished their first recordings and hope to release their first EP later this year. 

Parsnip will play alongside Drug Sweat, Sydney synth-punk band Tim & The Boys, Vertigo, and locals Lime Lagoons at The Eastern this Saturday.

The four girl line up from Melbourne were already friends when they joined as Parnsip. 

“I’d love one day to not be seen as a female band and having people draw attention to our gender in everything we do, getting put on all girl line ups makes you feel like a token and at the same time I think it’s important to talk about girls being in bands.”

“Female is not a genre. It’s just the gender that the people in the band happen to be. 

“I’m sure there are things that come out in our music that wouldn’t come out if we were all guys, obviously people’s gender affects their experience in the world, it’s not like a marketing tool for us.”

Parsnip has played a gig almost every week for a year.

“We’ve worked really, really hard, we’ve played so consistently. I don’t think we've had things handed to us but I think because we’ve all been in bands before we all really want it to succeed,” Hawkins says. 

“Opportunities do come to you early on and you need to be pretty proactive in making the most of them. There’s things that pop up early and I think in other bands we haven’t known what to do.

“There’s things when you first start a band that might seem really scary like thinking about recording or organising gigs. I think we’re all quite proactive with that stuff now.”

First they took any gig and now they’re having to knock some back.

“We are spoiled. It’s such a luxury to be able to choose what you do and it’s really busy, we can’t do all the stuff we need to do now.”

Parsnip, Drug Sweat, Tim & The Boys, Vertigo, and Lime Lagoons will play The Eastern this Saturday, July 29 from 8pm till midnight. The Eastern is at 81 Humffray Street North. Tickets are $10.