Matt Holborow writes songs and makes guitars! He approaches both in a similar way - learning by doing, trial and error and gradually gaining confidence. Matt has been known by friends and colleagues for a long time as a musician and someone who can change the lyrics of existing songs for a certain occasion. It's only in the past few years that Matt has taken the plunge and started writing his own original songs.

He likes to allude to aspects of his life through songwriting but hide the specifics behind scraps of truth and fiction taken from other sources. Matt has separate "banks" of lyrics and Musical ideas which come together through a hard-to-pin-down process into songs. He's had the experience of writing a song in five minutes, taking years to write a song and everything in-between.

Working with his band mates in "Box of Hammers" Matt has built his songwriting ability and now can imagine in his head the various parts of a song - guitars, bass, vocal harmonies etc.

Matt played two songs live in the studio - "There's a Bear in There" and "Tradie Lady". Both songs have great stories attached and Matt points out that there is an autobiographical element in both songs and a lot of stuff he adapted or made up!

Matt encourages new songwriters to take it slow, try things out, throw lots of things away and trust your instincts.