W INTERVIEW
L
AN INTERVIEW WITH
SNOW PATROL'S GARY LIGHTBODY
Wirral Life caught up with Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol ahead
of their forthcoming performance at Manchester Arena on
January 30th.
Snow Patrol are an Irish rock band formed in Scotland in 1994
consisting of Gary Lightbody, Nathan Connolly, Paul Wilson, Jonny
Quinn and Johnny McDaid. Initially an indie rock band, the band
rose to prominence in the early-mid 2000s as part of the post-
Britpop movement.
During the course of their career, Snow Patrol have won seven
Meteor Ireland Music Awards and have been nominated for six Brit
Awards. Since the release of Final Straw, the band have sold over 16
million records worldwide.
The band were founded at the University of Dundee in 1994 by
Lightbody, Michael Morrison, and Mark McClelland as Shrug. After
briefly using the name Polarbear, releasing the EP Starfighter Pilot
(1997) and losing Morrison as a member, the band became Snow
Patrol in 1997 and added Quinn to its line-up. Their first two studio
albums, Songs for Polarbears (1998) and When It's All Over We Still
Have to Clear Up (2001), were commercially unsuccessful and were
released by the independent record label Jeepster Records. The band
then signed to the major record label Polydor Records in 2002.
Connolly joined Snow Patrol in 2002, and after their major-label
debut album, Final Straw, the following year, the band rose to national
fame. The album was certified 5× platinum in the UK and eventually
sold over 3 million copies worldwide. Their next studio album, Eyes
Open (2006), and its hit single, "Chasing Cars", propelled the band
to greater international fame. The album topped the UK Albums
Chart and was the best-selling British album of the year, selling over
6 million copies worldwide. In 2008, the band released their fifth
studio album, A Hundred Million Suns; then, in 2009, they released
their first compilation album, Up to Now; and, in 2011 released their
sixth studio album, Fallen Empires. The band released their seventh
album, Wildness, on 25 May 2018.
Is it good to finally be back with Snow Patrol after so long away
and obviously working with other musicians on other projects?
Gary: Yeah, course. You know, we were working together all the way
through those seven years. I mean we started making the album that
would eventually be called Wildness in 2013 with a view of getting
that out in 2014 I guess, but it just didn’t work out that way and we
wanted to keep rolling really. All we did was take one year off Snow
Patrol, and then we got back at it. The songs just weren’t ready, they
weren’t right, unfortunately it took a lot longer than we thought. It’s
so exciting to be back, to have the album finished, have the album
out there, to get back out on tour, and you know, to tour Britain and
Ireland again is amazing. We can’t wait.
With you having moved to LA and other members living in the
UK, how easy was the writing process? Did you make time to get
together whilst you were living over there or was it the case of
you just wanted to go over there, get some you time first and then
come into the writing process?
Gary: Yeah I mean, we took a little bit of a break. Nathan went and
started Little Matador, I did another Tired Pony album and co-wrote
with a bunch of different people including Taylor swift and stuff, and
Johnny McDaid was doing that as well with lots of different people
and producing. Jonny started Polar Publishing, Pablo was writing
and producing with people, too, so everybody was doing their own
thing, and I was trying to write the Snow Patrol album at the same
time but, you know, I’ll write generally on my own and then I’ll take
it in to Garrett (producer) and we will work on tracks together and
then everyone else will come in over the period. The years between
2013 when I started writing and 2017 when we finished, we would
get together for a couple of weeks or a month at a time. I think the
album was probably about nine months work in those four, nearly
five years. So it wasn’t constant working for five years – that would
have probably killed us! I
So like, who was motivated first to get the ball rolling with the
new album? Was it yourself, like, “right okay, I’ve got some ideas,
let’s start?”
Gary: Yeah. yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I write the songs, or at least
start to - people are waiting for me to have some ideas before we get
together. We’re not a jamming kind of band, we don’t get together
and jam a bunch of ideas and then take the best bits. I always find
that a bit of a waste of time, I know that some bands do it, and they
do great at it but it just never really worked out for us, it never really
clicked, it wasn’t our best way of working, so I like to have the songs
written before we record them, you know.
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