Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody feared the band were over while making their new album because it “just wasn’t happening” in the recording studio.
The ‘Chasing Cars’ hitmakers are now a trio comprising the singer, Nathan Connolly and Johnny McDaid, following the departures of drummer Jonny Quinn and bassist Paul Wilson, and it took them some time to find their way while working on latest LP ‘The Forest Is The Path’.
Explaining how they’d struggled with the record for five months but it “wasn’t happening”, Gary admitted to The Sun newspaper: “It was a rocky time and so, because we’d just been through quite a difficult process trying to make the album and now we were a three-piece, I thought, ‘Are we kidding ourselves? Is this too big a hill to climb?’
“We were helped back to health by a producer friend, Michael Keeney, and it was what we needed, as our confidence had been shaken. We just had to figure out what the three of us wanted to do.
“And it was an easy and quick answer. We wanted to continue, and so here we are.”
Meanwhile, after previously working with Taylor Swift on ‘The Last Time’, a track from her 2012 album ‘Red’, Gary admitted he would be “up for” writing with the pop superstar again, though he hasn’t seen her for some time.
Asked if he had attended her ‘Eras Tour’, he admitted: “I haven’t seen the show. I should, but we’ve been flat out doing press and gigs.
“But I did get my sister and niece tickets in Ireland, and loads of friends have been recently. Everyone is absolutely blown away by her. It’s fantastic.
“I haven’t seen her in a while but of course I’d be up for working with her again — if she’d have me.”
‘The Forest is the Path’ – the group’s first album since 2018’s ‘Wildness’ – was released on Friday (13.09.24).