As the lineup Glasgow's huge TRNSMT festival is announced, with headliners including grime heavyweight Stormzy and rising stars Catfish and the Bottlemen, we spoke to festival director Geoff Ellis about why you should be excited for this year's festival.

“Having Stormzy as the headliner, we wanted to make sure that on the Friday we had a lot of rap, hip-hop and Grime" says Geoff.

“It’s a real coup to have both Stormzy and Gerry Cinnamon. Gerry is arguably is arguably the biggest band on the bill at that day, he can sell out a lot of venues at this point in time.

“Two years ago he was opening up the King Tut’s stage at TRNSMT.

“The two of them sit well together as well. Though they’re different musically, the synergy around the fact that they’re both people’s poets and from the streets and connect with real people. They’re both disrupters, they don’t follow the traditional paths that they’re meant to follow as an artist.

TRNSMT 2019 full line-up: who's playing this year's festival?

“We’ve also got Years and Years who did phenomenally well at the Hydro last time.

“There’s a bit more of an urban flavor on that day but that’s reflecting what people are interested in.

“On the Saturday we’ve got Catfish and the Bottlemen who are huge now. In terms of a band that’s got as quick as them so quickly in the UK, they’re the one following on from Kasabian or Arctic Monkeys.

TRNSMT festival 'is here to stay in Glasgow', says Geoff Ellis

T King Tut's stage has been a mainstay of Scottish festivals from T in the Park to TRNSMT and has a history of helping launch the careers of some of the UK and the world's biggest bands, many of which have come back to play the main stage, and even headline.

“I’d argue when we acts like Gerry Cinnamon on the Tut’s stage last year, we were identifying bands and giving them an opportunity to come back to perform on the main stage" says Geoff.

“We’ve done the same with Sigrid and Tom Grennan who all played the stage in pervious years.

“Even Snow Patrol were a band that we put on at King Tut’s in the early 90s.

“Bands like Oasis, Kasabian, The Killers, Kings of Leon all started out lower down on the King Tut’s stage before coming back to headline. That pattern is reflected throughout TRNSMT."

TRNSMT 2019 lineup leaked: Artists rumoured to be playing in Glasgow

The festival is shorter than previous years, but Geoff insists that may not be the case next year:

“Some people have asked why it’s only one weekend this year, but that’s not to say that it won’t be two weekends in the future, but we base that really on the availability of artists.

“Last year there were a lot of artists around to make it work over two weekends – next year, who knows.

“We commissioned an economic impact assessment for last years event and it showed that nearly £13 million was generated for the local economy from TRNSMT.

“Interestingly, of the people who came to the festival from outside Glasgow, 99% of them said that they had a very favorable opinion of Glasgow as a city from having come to the festival.

“People have come away and said what a great city Glasgow is to their friends and family and that’ll bring more people up here. I think TRNSMT plays a crucial role in seeing Glasgow reaching it’s very high tourism aspirations.”

TRNSMT will take place in Glasgow Green from 12-14 July 2019, with tickets on sale from Friday 22nd February from WWW.TRNSMTFEST.COM