We Chat With Aaron and Spencer About Tour Life, 20 Years of They’re Only Chasing Safety, and Their Upcoming Album – Interview with Aaron Gillespie and Spencer Chamberlain From the Band Underoath

For more than twenty five years, Florida born metalcore giants Underoath have been a cornerstone of the post-hardcore scene, carving out a unique legacy among their fellow early 00’s emo-metal compatriots with their electrifying live performances. As the band celebrates two decades of their breakthrough album They’re Only Chasing Safety, Underoath is embarking on a nostalgic 20th anniversary tour that has rekindled the fire for longtime fans and introduced the groundbreaking album to a new generation. The tour reaches an enormous grand finale with four sold-out shows at Jannus Live in Tampa, and these hometown performances promise to be a emotional celebration of not only the album but Underoath’s enduring connection with the community that shaped them.

But like they say, there’s no rest for the wicked as the band already has a packed schedule for the next year, including an appearance at Welcome to Rockville and a far-reaching US tour with Papa Roach & Rise Against, which will be hitting South Florida at the iThink Amphitheater on October 5th, 2025. In this exclusive interview, we had a chance to chat with Aaron Gillespie and Spencer Chamberlain about the 20th anniversary tour, Underoath’s plans for next year and the band’s latest single and mysterious upcoming new album.

Underoath at Heart Support Festival in Orlando, FL

Gleb : Hey guys, how’s it going? 

Aaron : Good! How are you? 

Gleb : Good, good. How’s tour been so far? 

Spencer : It’s been great! 

Aaron : Yeah, it’s been like 60 shows. 

Gleb : Oh, wow, that’s a that’s a long tour. I bet you guys are going to be glad to be home in a month or so. 

Aaron : We’ll be home in a couple of weeks, Thank God.

Gleb : Yeah, I think the 16th is your last show, right? 

Aaron : Yep that’s correct, the 13th through the 16th are the last shows in Tampa

Gleb : Yeah, I I look forward to it! I I think I’m gonna be there for the last one, so it’ll be sweet. 

Spencer : Oh yeah, it’s gonna be a fun one.

Gleb : Alright, well, let’s get started. So you’re currently on tour celebrating 20 years of “They’re Only Chasing Safety“. Did you guys ever imagine this album would have such a lasting impact? How does it feel to still be playing these songs 20 years later? 

Spencer : Yeah, I don’t think we ever thought anything of it when we made these songs. I mean, we were babies when we wrote these songs and playing them 20 years later….I guess on one hand, we’re always going to play songs off of every record, so it doesn’t feel much different than a normal tour where we would still play a couple of songs from “They’re Only Chasing Safety“. I mean maybe not, you know, we don’t play in the full record in full on a normal tour, but still, it doesn’t feel much different to me.

Aaron: Yeah, we never stopped playing these songs.

Spencer : We rotate songs on each tour, and there’s some songs that are always going to be there. You know, the fan favorites, and then there’s gonna be the new songs, and then we switch up what we have time for with the rest of the setlist, and we’ll rotate in and out songs from every record we’ve written. 

Spencer : So you know, these songs have been a part of our set list since we wrote them.

Aaron : Never all at the same time! *laughs* But yeah, they’ve been a part of our lives the whole time. 

Gleb : Gotcha. And that kind of leads into my next question: For this tour, it’s obviously a special celebration of the album. Are you guys playing the entire album in full or are you guys mixing together some other songs in from your career or how do you guys have it set up? 

Aaron : Full album, all the way through. And then there’s a six song encore, we play our new song and then the fans voted for the five other songs. 

Gleb : Oh, awesome, that’s perfect. So that way, everybody gets a little bit of what they want. 

Aaron : That’s the plan. 

Gleb : Perfect. Do you guys have a personal favorite song that you love to play live from”They’re Only Chasing Safety“? 

Spencer : Not a chance, bro. *laughs* We’ve been playing that record forever, like those songs we play for you guys. It’s hard to really have a favorite from something you wrote when you were a teenager, you know? 

Gleb : I hear that. *laughs*

Spencer : And we enjoy every moment of it, but there’s not like a “Oh, I love playing this song”… It’s like, of course you’re not going to love your earliest work because you were, you know, a baby. And now you’re an adult, so you’re getting smarter and better and wiser and have more things to say, more intelligent ways to say it, more intelligent ways to write it, perform it. But we do it for you guys, you know. And then we get to play stuff off of our whole catalog, so that’s fun for us. The encore is definitely where the fun kicks in for us. 

Underoath at Heart Support Festival in Orlando, FL

Gleb : Right on, well I’m sure the fans really appreciate you guys breaking out the older songs, because it’s something they’ve listened to and enjoyed since they were kids. And that leads into my next question is, have you guys noticed a lot of the younger generation coming out to these shows or is it mostly kind of “elder emos”, so to speak? 

Aaron : Everything, man. 

Spencer : Yeah, it’s everyone *laughs* we got people there with their newborns. 

Aaron : A lot of people are bringing their kids, which is cool.

Spencer : We’ve got people in like the 7-10 year old category and we’ve got kids in their early 20’s.

Gleb : Yeah, that’s awesome!

Spencer : We got some people our age, in their 30s and 40s and then we even got some people in their 50s, you know, so it’s very cool. It’s starting to feel like we’re in a real band, you know? And not just in a moment. *Laughs* When you’re starting out, its like, “Are you going to survive a record? Two records?” Your buzz, your breakthrough album….. like, there’s so many obstacles, and now we’re kind of getting to the point where it’s like… “This is our life. This is our career and it’s going to stay”. It’s kind of cool to see people from 50+ all the way down to 11. And then there’s fans that know who we are, and then there’s the people bringing their children that are so young they don’t even know what a song IS, much less know our songs. So, you know, its very cool. 

Gleb : Well, thats awesome. It’s great to see such a wide variety of ages that your audience, the big mix of people. 

Aaron : Yeah, man, we’re really lucky. 

Gleb : So how do you feel Underoath has evolved as a band since “They’re Only Chasing Safety“? 

Aaron : In every way, I mean that was 21 years ago when we wrote those songs, you know? I equate it to anything in your life, like, what did you do 21 years ago that you still do today? You know what I mean? As you get older, you change,  you grow up, you become something different, and I think that’s been reflected in the evolution of the band. I mean, we have been into 1000 different things since then and been through 1000 life experiences.

Spencer : Whether it was years where we were getting along or not, the one thing about Underoath that’s been cool is that we’ve always pushed each other to find a middle ground when it comes to songs, which means, all of us love what we’re working on at that time. So every record we’ve ever done, I truly believe is the best representation of us as songwriters at that particular moment in time. Be it “Voyeurist“, be it “Erase Me“, be it “Disambiguation” all the way down to “Chasing Safety“, and now the new record that is going to come out that no one knows about yet that we’ve recently finished recording. 

Aaron : I think that if you’re honest with your fans, they’ll stay with you. And what I mean by that is, if you make your craft honest, you make what you really believe in at the time and you put a proper timestamp of where you are as an artist at the time, your fans will stay with you.

Gleb : Gotcha. You guys actually mentioned an upcoming new record…I was going to ask about that. After you guys are done with this anniversary tour, do you have anything coming up planned? I know you just released “Survivors Guilt” as a single, but do you have a full new album in the works or a new album tour cycle coming up? 

Aaron : We have a new song coming out on the 8th of December called “Generation No Surrender” and then early next year we go to Australia with Alexisonfire and then right after that we do a full U.S. tour with Papa Roach and Rise Against.

Gleb: Awesome!

Aaron : That will sort of be the album release tour. 

Spencer : So there’ll be new music and all sorts of shit.

Gleb : Gotcha. So sometime next year? 

Spencer : We’ve got 2 songs out right now and if you know anything about the music industry, you know there’s more to come. *laughs* 

Gleb : Gotcha. So I think I have one more question for you guys.  It’s really awesome to see a Florida band get as big as you guys have because I know it’s so hard to tour in Florida cause it’s such a huge state and there’s just so much distance between cities that it’s tough to kind of get your name out there outside of the state. What advice would you give young bands that are just starting out? 

Spencer: I mean… Just be true to yourself. Make make music that makes you happy. Fuck what’s cool, fuck what’s popular right now, fuck what other people want you to do. Who cares about the trends, about major labels? Who cares about TikTok? Make the music that makes you happy, because then I think that eventually honesty always shines through at the end. It might take you twice as long, or it might be overnight, who knows? But if you’re doing shit that makes you happy, the rest doesn’t matter. You could be a band that forever plays in front of 100 people, or maybe you’re you’re destined to play in front of hundreds of thousands of people. But as long as you’re doing it because you love it. The rest will fall into place. 

Gleb : Awesome. Well, thank you guys very much for your time. I really appreciate it!

Aaron : Have a good one. 

Spencer : Thanks, you too!

Be sure to check the out rest of Underoath’s They’re Only Chasing Safety 20th Anniversary Tour, culminating in four sold out back-to-back shows at the Jannus Live in Tampa, FL on December 13th through the 16th. And be sure to keep an eye out next year for their upcoming album, as well as appearances at Welcome to Rockville and supporting Papa Roach and Rise Against on their extensive summer tour!