You’ve got a lot of touring coming up. Are you looking forward to it?

I can’t wait. Each tour begins as a work in progress. We’re rehearsing now, and I know after we play the first show we’ll still be making changes. It’s ongoing until you’ve done four or five shows. That doesn’t mean those shows before are any less intense, but we’re always searching for our perfect setlist. We settle in a couple of shows into the tour.

You toured last year as well?

Yes, we got off tour at the end of November; we did UK, Ireland and Europe. We covered a lot of ground, had a fantastic time and it was the first tour off the back of the new record. We were nervous because we didn’t know how it was going to go down, but it was a massive success.

How is this tour going to be different?

We’ll be playing different songs from the new album, and mixing up the rest of it too with older songs we haven’t played in a while. We know there might be a lot of people there who were at the shows last year, so we have to vary things for them. It’s got to be worth their while and every gig has to be special.

Do you like the idea of having two months on the road?

I kind of do. Even before the band took off I took every chance to travel. I’d go to America to work in a pizza place for a few months, or go to Europe and see what was happening there. I love travelling and life on the road, moving around.

That’s one of the reasons being a singer in a band is my perfect job. Don’t get me wrong, after two months on a tour bus I’m very happy to get home to Belfast.

You go off to Europe in March and then tour the UK again afterwards?

Yes. The tour’s called The Road Less Travelled, so we’re going to all the places we’ve never been before. It’s a lot of shows, and the venues are smaller than we’d normally play, but anywhere we go in the world, we have people on Facebook saying, ‘Why don’t you play in my town?’. On this tour, we are trying to reach all those places.

You supported AC/DC when they last toured, and Paul Rodgers in the past. Do you prefer playing those arenas, or smaller shows?

It takes us back a few years playing the small venues. I like being near the crowd, looking in their eyes and having fun. Crowd interaction is important, and you miss that when you’re playing the big venues, as good as it is to be on a stage that big.

How was recording New Horizon?

We didn’t want to do too much messing about.

We wanted to write some rock’ n’ roll songs, record 25 takes, pick the best takes and put together an album with as much live energy and as many strong melodies and great lyrics as we could. We ran with that and thankfully New Horizon is the end result.

Do you have to take care of your voice when you’re on tour?

I do, yeah. We think about the pacing of the set, so if there are six songs where I’m belting it out, the seventh better have a 30-second guitar solo so I can get a drink of water and rest for a second. I can’t do that 40 nights in a row thing.

There’s a lot of drinking, too, I’m not going to lie to you, so if it means going to bed at 5am rather than staying up till 8am, I’ll do it. I can’t be unable to sing if there are people paying good money to come and see us – but I do have a good time as well.

Tour dates: February 21, Empire, Middlesbrough. February 22 ,Duchess, York