Anna's Number is used to stopping shoppers right in their tracks with their busking skills in the streets of Belfast but now they are preparing for the biggest gig of their career.
The five-piece band consisting of Zacc McGloughlin on saxophone, Matt Evans on keyboard, Peter Close on bass, Matty Burke on guitar and Jamie Hewitt on drums will be performing to a sold-out crowd in Limelight on the same night Ed Sheeran plays for fans on Boucher Road.
Members Zacc and Matt told Belfast Live it was an "incredible" feeling for the band to have reached this major moment after years of working hard in the music scene across Northern Ireland.
Read more: DJ Hix on how 6am starts in lockdown helped him achieve his music dream
Matt said: "In gigs when you are support acts, the crowd is actually there to see the main act but now there are going to be 900 people here to see us.
"Most of the people there will have probably just seen us on the street with a very small set up but for Friday we have about four times as much gear on stage - people will be blown away I think."
The band first came together by chance when Zacc was still in school and selling out headline shows was only but a dream.
"We formed the band when I was 16 and the lads were 17 and 18 - I was still at school and Matty, the guitar player, and Peter, the bass player, and Jamie, the drummer, needed money to go off to Texas for a festival.
"I guess we started it because we were all really broke," Zacc laughed.
"I was happy to do anything and we did busk before but what I think that made us different was that we used actual amps."
He continued: "People started to ask us what we were called and we hadn't really ever came up with a name as at that time, we just thought we'd be doing it once or twice and that would do us.
"When we were sifting through all of our change we noticed a number in there that said 'call me' and was signed Anna - it was for our original keys player but it was just funny and we just decided to call ourselves that."
In a coincidental twist of fate, when Matt joined the band and took over as the keyboard player - he helped the band identify the original Anna of their namesake.
Matt added: "The first time I played with the band was because the original keyboard player couldn't do it. I have a caravan in Donegal and I had to leave to go back to Belfast and was telling everyone it was to play with this band called Anna's Number and I just happened to be chatting to my friend who also lived in the same caravan site.
"She was called Anna and it turned out to be the exact same Anna who left her number - she's now the guest of honour at the show."
What started as just busking continually every week, playing weekends when Zacc was off school, Anna's Number continued to grow their skill and identity as a band while growing their following over the years of playing gigs in Belfast.
Matt said: "The pandemic came at an interesting time because our Black Box show in February 2020 was one of our last gigs before lockdown and that two years of downtime gave us a lot of time for us to develop musically as a band.
"When you have no gigs, you can actually spend a lot of time doing cool stuff."
Zacc added: "It brought us right back to how the band was formed and during those first months of lockdown, we were all so bored and really just missed playing. The only time we could do that was when we would go out and busk.
"It was funny because it was at a time when people couldn't meet and all you could really do was shop so you would find that it would just brighten people's day to see live music again and that added a massive fulfilment for me and made us want to work towards doing a big gig once this is over."
Known for covering songs that people know and love and giving them an Anna's Number twist that you won't hear anywhere else and fans can expect "bigger everything" at Friday's show.
When booking what would be their biggest gig to date, the band were unaware they had landed on a night that global superstar Ed Sheeran would be playing the Boucher Road Playing Fields - however, that hasn't stopped people messaging still hoping to get a ticket after selling out.
Zacc added: "I was speaking to a guy yesterday who actually sold his Ed Sheeran ticket to come see us which I couldn't believe."
They hope their Limelight show is only the beginning as they want to keep gigging putting on their own headline shows.
"We've put so much work into the Limelight show that it would be a shame to not do it again - we'd love to take it around Ireland," Matt said.
Read more: Reasons why we love heading for a night out in Belfast
Read more: Snow Patrol's Johnny McDaid and Ed Sheeran win copyright battle
To get the latest breaking news straight to your inbox, sign up to our free newsletter.
