I think I have a vested interest in thinking that the lyrics are important, but I think for us it's important that we all write things that mean something to us, and I think we're not really in the business of writing la-la-love-you chart pop songs. It needs to have a personal pulling in the gut for me, to want to write anything about it.

Nobody is strong 100 percent of the time, or falling apart 100 percent of the time; sometimes you're doing both at once.

For us, the stuff we know is writing songs, playing shows, and that's what we're trying to concentrate on. Not trying to read about yourselves or looking up things about yourselves on the Internet - it's the key, or you'll go insane!

The idea was that the record itself ['The Bones Of What You Believe' ] is a kind of labour of love for us - all our energy and all our passion and all the stuff we believed in is in that record, so you're kind of handing that off to other people, if that makes sense.

No matter how many people try, no matter how many fancy songwriters in Los Angeles try to break it down to a formula... to an extent, there isn't a science to writing great songs, I suppose.

I learned drumming as a second instrument because I didn't want to sing. Sometimes I would quite like to be left in the back, in the darkness by myself.

I quite like being removed from the industry stuff so that when we're not on tour and we're writing, we're in a small room and you can't get out physically. I like that mental checking-out aspect - I think it's quite nice.