Melbourne quintet Stealing O'Neal have recently announced their finale show after a career spanning 7 years. Tahlia Pritchard caught up with guitarist and back up vocalist Jack Tosi to get the lowdown regarding the split, and what fans can expect from their final show.

Hi Jack, thanks for chatting with us today! First up how are you, and where abouts are we talking to you from?

Yeah I’m actually about to start work. I’m at Chadstone here, you know the VIP nights they have? I gotta do that and I’m not looking forward to it at all!

What’s your role working there exactly?

Just work in retail. Tonight I don’t actually sell anything, I just make sure shits not getting thrown on the floor which is probably will be...It’s chaos!

So Stealing O’Neal has recently announced their finale show, it’s come a bit out of the blue for many fans. Can you tell us a bit about the decision to call it quits?

Well basically, we spent half the year inactive, we had a few people going away, and they’re about to move away indefinitely. Ryan has his other band also, so it sort of just came to that time where we’re just getting a bit older and some people have different priorities. There’s no bitterness or anything, it’s the right decision for us.

Time to move on.

Yeah exactly. I mean basically we over surpassed any expectation we had of the band ever. We never thought we’d put an album out so we did that and more. We achieved all our goals so you know, it’s not like we were waiting for something else.

What can fans expect from your finale show?

Well the finale show is going to be a lot of fun. We’re going to play all the songs off the album that we’ve never played live, including the piano songs, so we’ll have to work something out for that! And basically we’ve got some of our best friends from around the country to help support us so you’ll see a few cameos and a few appearances from the other acts so it’ll be fun!

It must be great to have The Getaway Plan and The Mission In Motion doing the last show with you as well.

Exactly. We’re so glad they jumped on board. They were our first choices and they just said yes in a heartbeat so it was fantastic to have them come support us.

It’ll be a great show for sure. And can we be expecting any nudity from Tim (O'Keefe, guitarist) again?!

Well if you get enough beer in him, I’d say yes. It is going to be his last chance, so I would say there probably will be! (laughs)

You’ve recently announced there will be an all ages show in October ..

There’s actually going to be two! There’s one on the 14th, I can’t actually remember where it is because I don’t have my work-sheet on me, and there’s one on the 22nd.

Both Melbourne shows?

Yep they’re both Melbourne all ages shows. One of them is at the Hume Festival of music on the 22nd, that’s that one.

Any chance the final show will be recorded for the fans that couldn’t make it to Melbourne?

We probably won’t specifically be able to record it at all. I’m sure people will be putting it online, and Tim will probably make a video cause he is quite good at that. But as for the whole show being recorded we won’t be able to.

Can you tell us about future musical endeavours you guys will be undertaking?

Well Ryan has his other band Goldfields that are actually about to release an EP so you’ll hear from him very soon. Chris and I have a project that we’re hoping to announce very soon. We’re hoping to have something out at the end of the year or early next year and a release, not just a song.

What are some of the highlight moments of your time with Stealing O’Neal?

Personally, my favourite thing or the one thing I always wanted to do when starting a band was support New Found Glory and we got to do that twice, really early on in our career. And that was the best thing ever for me, playing with our heroes, having them be really nice guys. So everything after that was just a bonus. I mean releasing an album was a monumental occasion and we were all so proud of it and we all helped record and make it. It was a really fun experience recording it and actually just having it on the shelf and looking at it was a very proud moment. And just all the friends we have made along the way. The bands – The Mission In Motion, Elora Danan, The Getaway Plan...they’re all our best friends now, so the people we’ve met, it’s just all been amazing.

While we have you here, it could be one of your last chances to name and shame your fellow bandmates – can you tell us any embarrassing or stand out tour memories from over the years?

Hmm let me have a think.
Alright, so I won’t go into detail, but one time Tom (Fleming, guitar) ended up with faeces in his eyebrows. It’s too long of a story to go into, but basically we were driving up to Brisbane and we decided to blow some things up and if you put two and two together it ended up on Tom. That’s probably the most embarrassing, the van was very stinky after that!

I could imagine!

(laughs) That’s definitely the most hilarious. But other than that there’s been a lot of drinking and general dysfunction happening from Tim and Tom all around. That’s all that’s just jumping out to me at the moment!

And finally, any last words to say to fans of Stealing O’Neal?

Thanks for all the support! Thanks for coming to all the shows and all the love on twitter and facebook. And for playing our CDs and everything basically. It’s because of our fans that we were able to do everything we wanted to and more. Without them, it would have been pointless.

Thanks so much for talking to us today. Hope the finale show is amazing!

No problem. Thanks so much!