Fresh from a world tour to promote their debut album, Funeral For A Friend's Matt Davies reflects on success and looks to the band's future.
Last updated: 21 November 2008
How many months have you been on the road?
Too many. More than I can count on two hands. We've stopped and started, but since September 2003 we've been pretty much on the go.
How have things changed over the last year or so?
I feel a bit older! A lot of my friends will kill me if I start bitching about it, but I've turned 25 this year and I feel like I've grown up a bit.
As much as I'd like to claim I'm going to have the spirit of the teenager before I die, I think life starts to take a weird turn. You have to take on responsibilities. You look in the mirror some days and you see yourself with stubble and you think 'F**king hell, I'm no longer 16'.
Does coming off tour put you in a soul-searching mood?
I'm in a transitional state between old happy me and this old pensive person. Sometimes I feel like that when I spend a few days alone. When you come off tour for a bit, you feel like you hit a brick wall.
Playing in a band is a double-edged sword. It's like, do we want contentment in what we're doing as a band? Or do we want contentment in our personal lives? I'm not sure you can have both.
Is there anything you can tell us about new material?
It's kind of dark - it does reflect certain grown-up attitudes that we've maybe accumulated over the last year and a half. Being in a band, dealing with success... it's a little bit less to do with boy-meets-girl, girl-breaks-boy's-heart, boy-writes-song-about-it.
It deals with death, what it's like to lose a close friend or a family member. It's looking at certain aspects of behind-closed-doors stuff - people being beaten on in relationships, or the emotional separation that you get from being on the road and away from your loved ones.
One thing I'm not happy about is not being able to have a stable relationship. I'm a person that's always grown up with the idea of being close to family, being in a relationship and being in love. I'm a romantic, man - I always have been, and it breaks my heart knowing that any relationship I'm in will be strained by something I also love doing. It's seriously soul-destroying some days.
