
IST IST live in Manchester (Gary Mather for Live4ever)
IST IST are prepping their fifth studio record.
Obligations has been picked by IST IST as the final preview of their forthcoming album Dagger ahead of its release via Kind Violence on February 6th.
“With Obligations I wanted to capture the feeling of being bound to someone who represents both your salvation and your undoing,” Adam Houghton has explained.
It’s about how love can feel like duty — something you can’t walk away from even when it hurts. I wanted to explore memory as something that both comforts and strangles, showing how the past can shape who we become. By the end, the narrator isn’t whole anymore, but they’ve accepted that pain and change are part of survival. It’s about transformation through loss — the quiet resilience of being altered by love.
Dagger will be taken out on the road following album launch shows next month, with a full UK tour booked for most of April.









