One of Britain’s best boutique festivals, Lounge On The Farm, chalked up another roaring success for Kent’s festival scene.A host of fantastic bands and performers dazzled crowds at Merton Farm, near Canterbury, and KM’s Kate Prendergast caught up with a few bands at the three day festival to see how things were going both on and off stage…

William Rees of Mystery Jets was full of good festival vibes: “I really want to see the New York Dolls, and then we have to leave at midnight to go to the Indigo festival in Shrewsbury.

“This is my favourite kind of festival - small and full of good, open-minded people. The food is great and it’s really sunny!

“We’ve got lots of festivals this year, we’re going to Japan at the end of August, then the South of France, Spain, Belgium and then Australia at the end of January 2009.”

He added: “We just did Ibiza Rocks, which was a really good opportunity to go over there and have a bit of a holiday and do a gig. Ibiza is quite an interesting place, full of English people in San Antonio going to all the clubs.

Then you have a beautiful island with amazing beaches and a lot of it’s quite undiscovered. We chilled out on the beach and tried to get a bit of a tan.

“For now, (the band) has been doing some B-sides for our next single, which is going to be Half In Love With Elizabeth, and that’ll be coming out at the end of August.”

The Lovedays’ frontman Ben Jones, from Medway, was delighted with the reaction from the crowds: “We played the Sheep Dip stage on Friday at 4pm, we got a massive crowd and a really great reaction to the new songs.

“I spent a lot of my time on the Farm Folk stage. The Onlookers were amazing, I’m looking forward to seeing Mike Strutter’s band, it should be quite interesting.”

Guitarist Jason Crispe added: “We had a great atmosphere for the gig, it was blinding! I saw Black Kids on Friday and they were pretty good, the only negative thing was that we had to hang around a bit and we wanted to catch other bands.

“We also saw a couple of tribute bands, but generally we’re enjoying the whole atmosphere of the festival. I just saw the Mystery Jets for the first time and they were brilliant and I can’t wait to see New York Dolls, just because it’s the New York Dolls!”

Neil and Tom from Welsh Indie pop outfit Los Campesinos were equally pleased with the festival vibe.

They said: “The festival has a nice family vibe, organic farmers with good food and good bands. We had a really good crowd for our set, and we hope they had as much fun as we did.

“We’ve just finished recording our next single and can’t announce it yet, but it’s before the end of the year and it’s really exciting.”

And there was plenty of good feeling from the festival goers themselves.

Jemima Marriott, from Cranbrook, said: “I thought that The Lovedays were fantastic and Ben Jones the lead singer is absolutely amazing. Black Kids had an incredible atmosphere with lots of young people everywhere. Wheeler Street were fantastic and had a massive crowd, and The Quays were really good on the Folly stage.

“Luke Jackson has a voice that is out of this world - he pulled in the crowds and it was amazing.”

Nicola Robson, of Maidstone, added: “Saturday was great, the weather was lovely and I saw a couple of good acts on the Folly stage - Scott Brunger was really good.

“Mystery Jets have been absolutely fantastic.”