The hostel is basic, but clean, cool (airco!), and the location is perfect. It's nearby the big shopping streets, metro, the cute neighbourhood Malasaña and supermarkets etc. It was really quiet in the hostel during our stay, we didn't meet a lot of people.
We didn't meet the host when checking in or checking out. We could enter the hostel via instructions the host gave us, which was fine, but a bit impersonal and when problems occured, the host was hard to reach (we experienced this when another family accidently locked themselves out of their room and couldn't reach the host for four hours).
Besides this, it's a good hostel, perfect for a (short) citytrip to beautiful Madrid!