Following their successful debut album, Happiness, was never going to be easy, but Hurts have pulled it off. Frontman Theo Hutchcraft, from Richmond, North Yorkshire, tells Andy Welch how they returned to their roots for inspiration

WHEN Hurts first caught the eye of the music press in 2009, there was very little of substance to go on.

The duo, Theo Hutchcraft and Adam Anderson, had only written and recorded a handful of songs when they posted the stark, black-andwhite video to Wonderful Life online.

The pair talked enigmatically in early interviews about their influences, concocting their synthpop vision while wearing smart suits.

Without playing any gigs at all, Hurts appeared on the BBC’s Sound of 2010 list, their annual poll of emerging artists to look out for. They released their debut album, Happiness, that year and it went on to become 2010’s fastest-selling debut.

‘‘We toured for a long time and had not been able to write, meaning we’d had all these ideas bottled up for ages,” says Hutchcraft, 26. “We were worried that after so long we might not be able to write any more songs.

Fortunately, once we did stop touring, we started straight away and it happened very quickly.’’ In the years before unveiling Hurts, Hutchcraft, from Richmond in North Yorkshire, and Anderson, from Stockport, were signing on, unable to find work in Manchester.

They knew when it came to writing again, there was only one place they’d go: back to Manchester, where they rented a flat on the same street where they used to live.

It’s the place which Hutchcraft says gives them a bit of perspective, and once they got back there the songs quickly started flowing.

Their second album, Exile, was taking shape. Miracle, which ended up being the lead single, was among the first songs to arrive.

‘‘It was extra special because that song was an emotion we’d wanted to express for some time. I think it opened a few more doors for us, too,’’ says Hutchcraft.

Compared to Happiness, Exile is a darker album, musically at least, swapping the debut’s sophisticated Tears For Fears-esque pop for something more industrial-sounding.

‘‘When we play songs from the first album like Silver Lining and Better Than Love live, they’ve become darker and heavier and that was the direction we wanted to go in second time around.’’ Hutchcraft says touring in so many countries means having to spread themselves thinly over a continent, but they’re used to it now.

‘‘Instead of playing tiny venues in places like Birmingham, Liverpool and Leeds we made the decision to go where people wanted to see us.

That meant we played our tiny gigs in Helsinki and Prague.

‘‘It was a shock at first, but it’s just how things are now. And it means, having put the work in, we’re already playing 7,500-capacity venues in Finland. We see our music cover a wider spectrum of places than a lot of bands and we know we’re lucky to have that.’’ Despite the big sales and exposure, Hurts have still managed to maintain some of the mystique they had when they first appeared.

‘‘Music is about entertainment and escaping from reality, I think, so if we believe that, it’s important we uphold the values we treasure. It makes it exciting for fans, and it makes it exciting for us.”