What Is It Like to See Only The Poets Live?

The Old Singles Never Left

The setlist changes by era, but the earliest songs hang on. "Emotional," from the early demos era, is their most played song at 186 performances on setlist.fm, ahead of "Looking at You" (173), "Every Song I Ever Wrote" (169), "JUMP!" (146) and "Nana's House" (137), and it has closed almost every headline show we found since 2023. In Nijmegen in April 2025 the band introduced "Nana's House" as a tribute to their earliest fans. At the Deaf Institute in Manchester in 2023, The Mancunion was surprised the room knew every word of "Ceasefire," their very first single. At the same time the crowd learns new songs before they exist on Spotify: in Nijmegen people nearly had all of "Saké" and "Emotionally Hungover" down while both were unreleased, and at the O2 Academy Birmingham in June 2024 "Mindset" and "Bump in the Night" went in before release. So you'll hear the demos era and next month's single in the same night. The end is fixed: "JUMP!" then "Emotional."

Sometimes Two of Them End Up Next to You

At some point the stage gets quieter and Tommy and Clem Cherry aren't on it. At the Shepherd's Bush Empire in May 2023 they walked into the crowd with no mics for "every god I pray to," and the floor closed in around them. At the Fleece in Bristol in August 2024 the crowd formed a circle in the middle for "Black And Blue" so everyone could see. In Birmingham that June a young fan cried during the same song and Clem gave her his picks. "Waking in the Dark" took the slot in Nijmegen in 2025. At Paradiso in April 2026 the pair played it as a duo, and that review doesn't say they left the stage, so don't bank on it every night. When it happens, the back of the floor can end up with the better view.

The Mental Health Songs Come With a Talk

Tommy introduces "It's Okay (Not To Be Okay)" and "Waking in the Dark" with a talk, and he means it. "You are never ever alone," he told the Deaf Institute crowd in 2023. "Someone will always listen if you reach out," in Birmingham in 2024. In Bristol friends leaned on each other and held hands, and in Warsaw that July a reviewer saw most of the crowd tearing up and hugging whoever was beside them. It sits alongside pride flags: Tommy draped one over his shoulders for "Ceasefire" in Berlin in February 2024, and in Nijmegen in 2025 a rainbow flag thrown on stage during "Every Song I Ever Wrote" went straight round his neck. At Paradiso in April 2026 the line was "be vulnerable, because that should be celebrated."

Four Mates Who Can't Stand Still

Longhurst's Instagram bio calls him "The hyperactive one in Only The Poets," and in Prague on 25 April 2026 he lived up to it, throwing his guitar across the stage and finishing the last song with it over his head. The rest of the band don't hang back. In Prague bassist Andy "Roo" Burge and Clem jumped into the pit still holding their instruments, and drummer Marcus Yates rode out the final song on Burge's back. They wind each other up on the mic: in Warsaw in 2024 Marcus teased the old single "Stolen Bikes" on the drums before Tommy shut it down with "Andy doesn't like that song," then led an England football chant the night before the Euro 2024 final. At Paradiso in April 2026 all four wore orange socks a fan had given them for King's Day. At Colours Hoxton in London in 2023 Tommy gave each of them a spotlight moment and the room cheered each one "for minutes."

Who's Standing Next to You

Young, loud and mostly female. Reflections of Darkness put the Frankfurt crowd in April 2026 at about 90% women, with "constant high-pitched screams" from the support slot on. Plenty of parents too: Maxazine described teenagers and their parents side by side in Nijmegen. Reviewers in Nijmegen and Bristol both credit the band's rise to supporting Louis Tomlinson, who picked them for his BRITs week show in 2020 and took them on tour in 2022, and the pre-show playlist in Birmingham and Bristol in 2024 was One Direction and Taylor Swift. Fans cross borders for them. People came from Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands for a small Birmingham show in September 2025, and in Warsaw in 2024 some queued from early morning in the sun for the barricade. The band notices: a Copenhagen fan on Bandsintown wrote that "They really take time to talk to fans before and after the show which was a bonus!"