What is the name of your band?
Tickle the Sage
What is the genre of music that you play?
Psychedelic Rock / Heavy Psych / Space Rock
Can you give a brief history of the band of how it came together and where it is today?
Tickle the Sage started with Alex Nikolov and Ivan Petkov. We’ve known each other since childhood. After high school we lost contact for a few years, then reconnected in 2020 and started playing music together again.
At first, the band was mostly about jamming. We played a lot outdoors in parks and open urban spaces around Sofia, Bulgaria, and organized small gigs where other artists could join in - musicians, dancers, poi and fire performers. We were already writing ideas, but nothing was fixed yet.
After a while, we decided to focus more seriously on songwriting and shaping those ideas into full songs. We’ve always been interested in analyzing music - what makes a song immersive, what kind of feelings and imagery it creates - and we wanted to explore that through our own writing.
In 2024, Sivin Sivov (drums) and Simeon Bayatov (bass) joined the band. Since then, we’ve been writing together as a full lineup and playing more regularly, including many gigs and festivals around Bulgaria.
We love underground culture and the DIY approach. At some point we even got solar generators and started organizing forest gigs in the mountains, inspired by generator parties. We do everything ourselves and remain fully independent - we record, produce, create our own artwork and visualizers (every song has either a visualizer or a video clip), film and edit our videos, and handle our own merch.
This is important to us because we want to build our own world around the band, not only through the music, but through everything we create.
We’ve just released our first studio album, Journey. We’re currently working on new material and plan to release more singles during 2026. We’re also preparing an Eastern European tour, with the aim of doing a wider European tour in 2027.
What can people expect from your music?
Music that moves and changes.
The songs develop over time, with different parts and moods. Some sections are heavy, others are calmer, but there’s always motion. We pay special attention to groove and melody and want the music to make you move, regardless of musical background. It’s also very atmospheric and immersive. When we play, we often feel like we’re stepping into another space, and that’s the experience we’re aiming to create.
The album Journey works as a whole, but each track can also stand on its own.
What is the best release that folks should check out from your band?
Our debut album Journey. We released it in November 2025.
It has seven tracks. Four songs have visualizers and two have full video clips. Everything is self-produced.
Where can people find you on Social Media?
Spotify
YouTube
Instagram
Facebook
Bandcamp
Ticke the Sage LIVE Album Promo
Journey on YouTube: