Like plenty of towns dotted along the North Carolina coast, Elizabeth City doesn’t really “do” original music. It’s a country-and-Southern-rock town where the bar wants a cover band because the crowd wants to hear something they already know. That’s the world Run Hill formed in, and it’s part of why the band sounds the way it does. They go their own way, pulling together surf rock and shoegaze with a punk backbone and a political spine. The trio calls it “surfgaze.”
The three members – Justin Hypes, Jon Miller, and Josh Lancaster – didn’t set out to build a scene. They started small by coming together with a common vision. What’s kept them going since is genuine friendship and a shared refusal to write shallow lyrics. Some of these songs started as scribbled verses from Justin’s time on a Navy ship, while others came together in two weeks flat as a reaction to the increasingly bad world we all live in.
Despite that edge, it’s clear they have endless gratitude for their friends, the bands who let them open, and the venues who took a chance on three guys from a town most people drive past on the way to the Outer Banks.
What’s something y’all have been listening to lately, either on your own or as a band?
Justin (vocals/guitar): I’ve been listening to a lot of Operation Ivy lately, and some Rancid today too. Staying in that Tim Armstrong, Matt Freeman lane right now. Still listen to them a lot.
Jon (drums): I listen to a lot of different genres, but I found these different Australian garage bands I’ve been listening to lately. One called Hoon. They’re fun garage rock.
Josh (bass): I’ve been really enjoying Twisted Teens. They dropped an album [Blame The Clown] earlier this year that is killer, with slide guitar and infectious bayou punk riffs. Cool blend of genres for what they’re doing. Their second album in 2026 was just released, so they’re hustling. Really enjoying that one too. I’m also looking forward to Cor De Lux’s new album, Year of the Horse. Definitely check out their music video for the first single, “The Cringe”.
Going back further: who was the first musician or band you remember discovering on your own, the one that kicked off your personal relationship with music?
Justin: Probably Third Eye Blind‘s self-titled album. It’s still fun to listen to nowadays.
Josh: I have a photo on my fridge of myself at 4 years old playing a Fisher-Price guitar singing New Kids on the Block’s “Hanging Tough”, so maybe that’s where it started. I can’t really remember a time of not being obsessively immersed in and consuming music. In college, I volunteered for NC State’s radio station, WKNC 88.1, and spent a lot of time at shows at local Triangle venues. The live experience always made the music feel more personal.
Jon: The first band that really got me into drumming was Rush, hearing “Free Will” on the radio. That’s when I got my first drum set. Before that, I played hand drums in a group of about 30 people in Alaska called Kodiak Island Drummers, playing Santana and Latin-infused rhythms. From there I went into drums proper and found bands like The Mars Volta, Yes, Magma, Russian Circles, Deftones, and later Hella and Lightning Bolt. Basically anything with really good drumming, I’ve been drawn to it.
When did you all come together as a band? And with all these different personal influences, how did you converge into the surf-gaze sound, that surf rock and shoegaze blend with a political edge?
Justin: I was in a metal band and met Jon through another project. I’m not really a metal guy, but it was fun. Jon and I started jamming because I knew that band wasn’t going to last. I already had a handful of songs. Jon brought Josh into the mix, and Josh brought his own flavor of melodic bass playing, and the songs took on a life of their own. I’ve always listened to punk, and we started playing a lot of shows with punk bands, so I naturally pushed more of that into it.
Jon: It’s evolved. After that first batch of songs that were mostly written by Justin, we started writing together, and now we’re putting together all kinds of new music spanning different genres.
Josh: It’s kind of funny, I used to run a brewery, so I was out and social all the time. Then I started working from home in the brewing industry and went pretty low-key. Jon and I had been sending music back and forth for a couple of years, stems and riffs, without hanging out much. He hit me up and said he was playing with this guy Justin, doing a surf-influenced rock thing, and sent me videos. My first instinct was to avoid any new projects, especially ones that involve self-promotion and rely on building an audience. But when I actually listened, I thought, damn, I really like this.
When we did start playing together, there was an immediate chemistry, definitely in terms of the music, but also in friendship. Some nights we talk way more than we play. It certainly helps to have the shared musical influences and similar views, but there’s no substitution for the genuine bond we have with each other, and I think that’s what expresses most in Run Hill. So, when you ask what I’m listening to lately, it’s usually the most recent voice memo recording from the jam room, because I just really enjoy hearing what these guys can do and what we can do together.
What’s it been like bringing this project out of the jam room and finding a scene to rally around it in Elizabeth City?
Justin: It’s tough here. This town’s built around the bar-band scene; country and Southern rock is what people want. But the venues have been receptive to what we’re doing. We’re close to the Outer Banks, and that’s kind of become our scene. Those kids show up, and the bands there are great.
We’ve got a couple of bands here doing original music too, like Post-American Gothic, trying to push things forward. We’re hoping Elizabeth City moves more in that direction. Being here is also just convenient, since we’re close enough to a lot of areas that most shows are an easy day trip. We try to bring bands through here to show the town has more going on than country cover bands.
Josh: We get why the bar-band scene is what it is, especially with the tourist crowd out here. We think we put on a good show, and think people can find something in our songs to connect to. A couple of spots in Elizabeth City – Kin Folk and Pine and Porch – have been really good to bands doing original and mixed bills, us included. The community building is the best part of participation at the level we’re at now.
As a smaller Elizabeth City band, we’re running as much as we can and making new friends in different cities along the way that keep opening doors. We’re grateful to those documenting and promoting the underground music scene, like Blank Tapes, NC Scene, and the venues willing to take a chance on us.
Every band we’re doing this with is on the same grind. It’d be easy to just stay in the jam room with drinks and smoke breaks, but we want to put something back into the community we’ve gotten so much from. I was that kid at shows in Raleigh, at Slim’s, at King’s, at Local 506, Cat’s Cradle, Duke Coffeehouse all the time. So getting to play those same rooms now is pretty awesome.
Any other local or North Carolina musicians y’all haven’t shouted out yet that you want to give love to?
Justin: Live Nude Surfers, those guys are awesome, so much fun. They helped us a lot early on, played our first show with us, and we still talk all the time. Super cool people, great band; we play shows with them all the time because we genuinely love them.
Josh: I’m going to give another shout-out to Post-American Gothic. They’re a really great band. But also, their singer, Pearl, has been a vocal coach for my daughter for years, and I’m super grateful for the ways she has shared her wisdom, creativity, and encouraging support with the next generation of musicians.
Also, gotta give a shout to our fourth Run Hill band member, Lindsey Hypes. She’s traveled with us for just about every show, documents us and other bands, and rocks out with us on late-night band practices.
Jon: My brother’s band Fyr Fytr, and my other band Cultivar.
Justin: Ryan Henry and the Bastards out of Wilmington; they’ve been super cool to us, and we’ve played several shows together. Also, The Matildas were really good too, great songwriting, real song craft.
Y’all mentioned new music in the works. Another EP, or a full-length? What’s the behind-the-scenes look right now
Justin: We’re working on a full-length. Starting next weekend. I don’t want to give a date yet, but we have a tentative one. We’ve also got a single we’ve been sitting on that we might put out in the meantime. But yeah, the full-length is coming by the end of this year; I’ll commit to that.
Josh: It’s exciting for us because a lot of these songs are ones we’ve been playing live for almost two years now. A lot of them are songs Justin wrote while he was out to sea, and they carry a lot of his worldview, which happens to be ours too. This kind of oppressive dread that the system’s getting away from us, that people are not getting a fair shake. It’s devastating to feel suspicious of your neighbor It sucks to be aware of the cronyism and how people are getting robbed of their ability to get by.
Justin manages to write songs that convey these experiences and feelings in a way that is authentic, identifiable, drip with nostalgia, but that remain hopeful, and are at times a firm call to action.
Justin: I was in the Navy, and what our country does overseas is atrocious. We feel it at home, but it’s tenfold outsourced around the world. Especially in the Global South and Global East. But there are actionable steps you can take tomorrow, like getting involved in your union or starting one if you aren’t unionized. We’ve talked as a band about picking a street in our town and cleaning it once or twice a year, just a couple hours to make our environment a little better.
It’s easy to feel hopeless, but you can’t give up. I write songs about my life but these topics are always present. “Oil Pirates”, our last song, went from writing to release about two weeks after the bombs dropped in Iran. I just immediately grabbed a pencil and a guitar and scribbled out some words, and it was the fastest song we’ve ever done. It’s also one of my favorites. Don’t give up, that’s the point I want to make there.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Leave a Reply