On the back of their third single, You loved the cage, we chat to Spinors’ Sergie Code about the inspiration behind the track, the band’s origin story, and what it all has to do with quantum theory.
By Graeme Smith
Spinors, welcome to York Calling! You’re a relatively new band. Can you tell us a little bit about your origin story?
Thanks so much for having us! Spinors is a brand-new chapter for me, but the story starts back in Argentina. I had a band there that was doing really well, but the pandemic lockdowns hit the project hard. At that point I felt it was time to take a risk and start over somewhere with more opportunities to reach an international audience, and London was the obvious choice.
There was also a very personal reason. My cat Glottis, who’d been with me for most of my life, was the reason I’d put off moving for years, and when he passed away in 2023, I took it as a sign that it was time to go. I spent two years getting settled here, then took five new songs, recorded them, and launched Spinors in March 2026.
The name comes from quantum physics: a spinor is a property that stays undefined until it’s observed, and I love that as a way of describing a song. It only truly comes to life when someone listens and brings their own experiences to it.
On stage, I’m joined by Gabe Scapigliati on bass and Cristina Pucci on drums. We met through a Britney Spears metal tribute project we play in together, which takes us touring all over the place, and they’ve brought so much energy and colour to these songs live.
We’re chatting to you today about your third single, You loved the cage. It’s an interesting heartbreak story, telling the same tale from two perspectives. Can you share the idea behind it and how it came about?
The song draws on a collection of experiences from my own life. It’s not about one person or one moment, but it reflects me caught up in certain situations over the years. I turned it into fiction because that gives me enough distance to explore it properly.
The cage is a metaphor for addiction, toxic behaviour and circumstances so harsh that two people have little more than each other. Their love grows out of that darkness, and the question is what happens when one of them finds a way out.
The lyrics tell it from the point of view of the one left behind, who feels used and betrayed after giving everything. The video tells the other side. Both of them were trapped in addiction. He turns his life around and chooses to move on, while she relapses, so suddenly there’s no clear victim.
And there’s a final twist: he ends up with his therapist, which makes you wonder whether he’s really free or has just found a new cage. I love that ambiguity, because it lets everyone decide for themselves whose side they’re on.
My review compared the sound of the track to Queens of the Stone Age. Who would you say your musical influences are and what were you listening to when you composed the single?
That’s a huge compliment, because I absolutely love Queens of the Stone Age! The era with Dave Grohl on drums was magnificent, but my favourite album of theirs is …Like Clockwork, which is ironic, because the title sounds like pure steampunk even though their aesthetic has nothing to do with it.
More broadly, I adore 70s riffs and big 90s choruses, so bands like Black Sabbath and Alice in Chains are deep in my DNA. I also grew up loving the women of 90s grunge and punk, like Courtney Love, Brody Dalle, Kat Bjelland and Donita Sparks, whose voices were so raw and fearless.
When I’m composing, though, I’m not really listening to anything outside the song itself. Everything starts from a feeling. I decide what emotion or situation I want to express, then I look for the elements that make me feel exactly that, and I keep working until the music says it on its own, before a single word of the lyrics exists.
For You loved the cage, that feeling was heartbreak, betrayal, confinement and disappointment. The heavy, gritty riffs carry the anger, and the Arabic scales in the solo bring in a sense of nostalgia and ambiguity.
The single comes with a video, shot in Lincoln as well as London. What was the experience of shooting and creating the video like?
It was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had. I directed and edited it myself, with Jay Notley behind the camera. A week before filming, I went to Asylum in Lincoln, one of the biggest steampunk events in the world, and fell in love with the city. I changed our plans so we could shoot at Lincoln Cathedral and the Drill Hall, and invited people from the local steampunk community to take part.
Getting there was an adventure in itself, because our trains were cancelled and we had to improvise our way across the country, but we made it on time!
The people in Lincoln were wonderful, and some of them later sent me messages that genuinely moved me. Sandra, who plays the Countess, told me it reminded her of her rocker days, and Evie, our youngest cast member, ended up with a much bigger role because she has such incredible presence on camera.
In London, we filmed at St Dunstan in the East very early in the morning to avoid the crowds. During one of the fight scenes, we spotted people watching anxiously from a window and had to explain it was all for a music video!
You’ve adopted a strong steampunk aesthetic. What inspired you to go for it?
There wasn’t one single moment of inspiration. It’s simply something I’ve always loved. I actually started out as a huge cyberpunk fan. I grew up on video games and series like Doom, Fallout and Ghost in the Shell, and more recently Cyberpunk 2077. But when I discovered the whole steampunk universe, it pushed cyberpunk into second place.
I find it absolutely marvellous: an alternative past where the world runs on steam engines, brass, clockwork and automatons instead of screens. I also think a band should use every tool it has, including the look, the videos and the performance, to tell its stories. Steampunk lets me talk about very real things, like addiction or manipulation, through metaphor and fantasy. That little bit of distance makes heavy subjects easier to take in, while still letting people recognise themselves in them.
You’re going to be up our way next year, playing at the Brudenell in Leeds on 13 March. What is a Spinors live show like?
A Spinors show is short but brutal! You loved the cage opens the set, and between those heavy riffs and the headbanging, it’s a declaration of intent from the very first second. You’ll see me jumping and thrashing my head from start to finish, climbing on and off whatever the stage has to offer.
There’s a lot of dynamics, with the energy rising and dropping, but we never let the intensity get in the way of playing well. And of course there’s the steampunk side, with Victorian outfits and my steampunk guitar. It’s a band you come to see so you can jump into the mosh pit and forget about everything happening outside the venue.
We can’t wait to bring that to the Brudenell. It’s such a special venue, and we’d love to see York Calling readers there!
Aside from the tour, what’s next for Spinors?
There’s plenty coming! We’ve recorded five songs in total and we’re releasing them one by one as singles. Once the promotion for You loved the cage wraps up, I’ll be filming the videos for the next two. We’ll also be sharing extra footage from this video on social media, because we filmed far more than fits into four minutes and there’s a lot more story to tell.
After that, I’d love to release an English version of a song that’s very special to me. Its original video featured Glottis, my cat, and since his passing was the sign that brought me to Europe, it feels like the perfect tribute. That video already had a steampunk look, so it fits right into the world of Spinors.
As for touring, we’ll keep playing around the UK for the rest of 2026 and the first half of 2027, then head to Canada and Europe in the second half of the year, and hopefully Japan and Australia in 2028.
Anything else you’d like to add?
Just a huge thank you to you, Graeme, and to everyone at York Calling for the review and for giving us this space. It means a great deal to emerging bands like us. Spinors is only six months old, and seeing people connect with our music, sing along at shows and even turn up in our T-shirts has been incredible.
If you’ve enjoyed You loved the cage, come and say hello in Leeds on 13 March. We’d love to meet you!