7. How do you write songs? Do you sit down and try to write them or do they just come to you?
It depends. When we first started out, Calum would play something on the guitar, I'd sing some sort of melody along to it, sometimes words would come to me at the time, but most of the time we'd write lyrics once we had the melody. A lot of the time. we'd discuss the subject matter before - Calum would be like, "so, what do you want to write about?" and I'd be like "erm, I don't know - we could write one about how jukeboxes used to be amazing and now they're totally shit." and he'd be like, "yeah, that's a good idea. Or we could write one about how annoying it is when you wake up with a hangover and there's no teabags." and I'd be like, "yeah man, that's WELL annoying. Everyone can relate to that." And then other times, one of us would go away and write a little emotional number - like Green, for example - and take it back to the other, play it and get a bit embarrassed, until the other would say, "aye, TUNE." One of our funniest songwriting experiences was the whole band, sitting around a dining table, really stoned, and we decided to write an imaginary story about going on a trip to Buckfast Abbey (see The Buckfast Pilgrimage for more info). 8. Do you guys have any rituals that you do before you go onstage?
Drink Buckfast. Maybe have a little heated debate over something or other. Sing some tunes. And one of our favourite rituals was starjumps. We had a really funny moment in Lochinver where we all backstage, having a five-way starjump, and the promoter walked in on us. He looked pretty baffled. We didn't bother trying to explain what was going on, we just stopped in our tracks and grabbed our tinnies. 9. What’s the funniest thing that’s happened while you were on tour?
See above. There are a LOT more. Some highlights include playing in Newcastle where we started drinking at midday and didn't go on stage until midnight, by which time we were completely inebriated and had an argument on stage about whether or not we'd played a song (we were so drunk, we'd forgotten to write a setlist). Half of us thought we had, half of us thought we hadn't. We ended up having to ask the audience. They weren't sure either. Another hilarious moment was playing at Beatherder Festival in 2009. Again, we weren't sober, and Tom (Pickles) was so not sober that his flute went flying out of