Irish band The Murder Capital refuse to take flag off stage at Berlin venue and venue cancel show

The band have claimed not to have known that they couldn't fly the flag.

The band, who have been vocal for quite some time about their stance on the conflict in Gaza, addressed fans outside of Club Gretchen which was where they were suppossed to play.

While holding a Palestinian flag, the band's frontman, James McGovern, spoke to fans.

He said: "I'm speaking totally from the band's point of view. We pulled into Berlin this morning. We had no idea that we weren't allowed to fly this flag here today. 

"We found out early this afternoon. We discussed it for an hour at length, what we should do. We came to the decision that we were not going to take the flag off the stage.

"That was a decision pretty easily made. But we discussed possible outcomes. 

"What if they decide to cancel the show? We thought about all of you deeply.  Because we care about you deeply, and I mean that. And our decision was that we're going to put the flag on stage. We put it up at about 2 pm."

McGovern added that the band spoke with the venue and offered to instead have a banner on stage with "Free Palestine" written across it, however, he added that the venue "wouldn't allow us to do that either."

He continued, saying that the situation was not just about national flags, but was about "political statements, and to us this isn't just a political statement."

McGovern said: "It's a humanitarian statement. We've been saying that in interviews for the whole time that we've been speaking about it as people. It's not all about politics.

"It's about people who are dying and being slaughtered every day. And that's happening right now. So for us as a band, who's had this flag on their stage for countless shows now.

"It would be the wrong thing for us to do to take it off the stage.  Just so that the venue is kept happy. We don't agree with that.

"We spoke earlier today about this. About how we wish live music and arts, and theatre could be free of political discussion and things like that.

"But as the world is, unfortunately it just cannot be. That's the way it is. So we'll be back to you as soon as we can.

We appreciate all your support deeply.  But most importantly, Free Palestine."

The venue the band were meant to play at, Club Gretchen released a statement following the cancellation.

In a post to social media they said: We are very sorry that the show with The Murder Capital didn’t take place. We as venue have a "no national flag" policy since many years.

"That means that we do not tolerate any kind of national flags in our venue. This is also written down in our venue specs so that also artists get to know about that.

"During the sound check this late afternoon it turned out that the band had a Palestinian flag on stage. We asked them to take the flag away, but they decided that for them and their show this flag is too important to be able to do the show without.

"We try to be a safe place for many different communities and really believe that music is able to build bridges - beyond borders and nationalities. Therefore, we deeply believe that national flags are not helpful at all.

"We feel deeply honoured that we can work together with so many different communites and artists from all over the world. We did so in the past, do so now and will do so in the future."

The statement also touched on the Israel-Palestine conflict, with the venue saying they "try to support the Palestinian community as well as Jewish and/ or Israeli people", and that they "never cancel speeches as long as they are not hate speeches against other groups of human beings."