Maxout at town hall 8, or move on to level 9?

In my personal opinion, if you want to go to TH9 then that is completely up to you. Rushing a bit to TH9 will not hurt you, especially with your current troop and building levels.

The one thing you should be careful to avoid is rushing to TH10, as that will cause your building advancement to decrease dramatically.

Personally I thought maxing was the best plan back when I was TH8. I maxed everything except about half of my walls before upgrading. While it was nice, it was not necessary. Currently I am a level 109 TH9, working on maxing out :)

You really should max out everything first or your going to spend lvl 9 wishing you had. This is a perfect level to focus in war so if you find it boring to build up everything, just focus on going trophys instead...

I'd say completely max out if you haven't already gone to th9. The reason being is your attacks are going to change. You can debate walls...I'd say max them, but that's just me... But as far as everything else...you need your golems maxed, your pekkas maxed, you want your barb king to 10 because of the boost from that. Then you fill storages and ug so you can hit the ground running with archer queen, Xbows, lab ug, and getting your new ad and other stuff up. Spend the time in th8 and you'll get through 9 faster. War attack strategy relies heavily on drags for most in th8, but in 9 you need gowipe, gowiwi. Also if you practice them now (with maxed gols and pekks) you'll be a more effective teammate.

I was in the exact same position as you. But I ended up upgrading.

I always get attacked by level 110s now and I am only a level 80. I hardly ever have any gold, but elixir I always have plenty of. But still not enough for me to proceed in the game. I started playing October 2012 and quit in early 2014 because of my mistakes. There was no way I'd ever start over, but I didn't want to continue where I was at.

So no, do not upgrade yet. Definitely max out.

Be wary if you upgrade your TH now it will be harder to find loot. There is a thing called a "Loot Penalty". Here is a graph to help you along. For Example lets say you have a Lv.5 TH attacking a Lv.5 TH with Maxed out storages, Clash only lets you take 20% of their 1,000,000 so you'd have 200,000 available

Source

But this decision is up to you, It's your game I am just here to give advice.

Clash on!