As a boyfriend, Gary Lightbody was never the finished article. “I was never there in the relationships that I had,” he says. “I was either away on tour or, when I was there ... I wasn’t there either. I wasn’t present. I had a lot of regret. I’m trying to work through it, let it go.”
But the Snow Patrol singer hasn’t let it go – not yet. The band’s new album, The Forest Is the Path, starts with Lightbody, who has been single for a decade, on his knees, raking through the ashes of old relationships.
“There is only you and me in this life/ And I don’t want to f**k it up now,” he sings on its track The Beginning, a blend of chiming stadium pop and the romantic angst that has been a Lightbody signature going back to Snow Patrol’s breakout hit, Run, in 2003. Not for the first time, he is the lover who has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and is haunted by his missteps.
“I’m certainly not the type of person that would make a mistake and then let go of it immediately,” he says. “I need to process it. Make whatever amends I need to make. And learn at some point to forgive myself. Not being present in my life and in the lives of the people that did love me for so many years is something I have a lot of regret for.”
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That he would struggle to give his full attention to the people right in front of him is partly explained by his success as a songwriter – and by the jet-set lifestyle that has ensued. Snow Patrol are, after all, one of the biggest Irish bands of the past 20 years. They’ve sold tens of millions of albums, headlined festivals and soundtracked everything from US medical dramas – the ballad Chasing Cars became a smash thanks to Grey’s Anatomy – to superhero movies.
But, as an indie band that dared to be successful, they also suffered a robust backlash. The instant they got on daytime radio, the knives came out. Reviewing Eyes Open, their 2006 LP, the NME derided Snow Patrol as purveyors of music for “Ford Focus owners”. Pitchfork dismissed the 2008 follow-up, A Hundred Millions Suns, as “soaring sissy-rock”.
The negativity has eased off in recent years. But there are no indications that they are about to be rehabilitated to any meaningful degree. Not for Snow Patrol the second chance accorded to Coldplay, the supremely earnest rockers to whom they are often compared.
Lightbody insists he did not set out to sell millions of records. The breakthrough of Run and its accompanying album, Final Straw, caught him off guard. “It’s really funny, because I’ve never written a song on purpose, ever,” he says. “I’ve never sat down and thought, today I’m going to write a hit song. It doesn’t work like that for me. I sit down and pick up a guitar and play it. And whatever happens happens.”
If anything changed going into Final Straw, it was that Lightbody learned to trust his instincts and to write catchier tunes than those on their first two LPs, Songs for Polarbears, from 1998, and When It’s All Over We Still Have to Clear Up, from 2001.
“Before Final Straw maybe I didn’t know or didn’t feel I was confident enough to write a chorus. Maybe that’s the only thing that changed. When I met Jacknife” – aka Garret Lee, the Dublin-born producer of Final Straw – “and he heard the new songs I was almost, like, ‘Um, I’m sorry ... there’s a chorus.’ He was, like, ‘Don’t be f**king sorry – that’s something to celebrate.’ It was written instinctively and from the heart.”
The Forest Is the Path is Snow Patrol’s first album for six years. Recorded in rural England, it is the work of the group’s three core members: Lightbody, the guitarist Johnny McDaid and the backing guitarist Nathan Connolly.
Much about it is familiar – and Lightbody is still beating himself up over letting down the people in his life. Nonetheless, the project feels like something new from Snow Patrol, in that it has a beautiful autumnal quality. That’s a contrast to the angst-ridden Wildness, from 2018, which delved into Lightbody’s crippling battle with alcoholism and the self-loathing it unleashed.
Going sober was tough. Talking about the process while promoting Wildness was a journey too. But Lightbody says it was a conversation he was ready to have.
“There’s no review or article that could be written about me in the press that would be worse than something I’ve said to myself. There’s no criticism anyone could level at me that I haven’t already levelled at myself,” he says.” I’m all the bastards of the day in my head.”
He has learned to be less critical of himself and more accepting of his flaws, and that is the journey chronicled by The Forest Is the Path. The band say that the album explores “the idea of love from the distance of time” – another way of saying that Lightbody has learned to look back on his past without punishing himself. Sobriety was part of that journey.
“Recovering ... getting sober, the first few years is difficult for most people,” he says. “It was for me. I didn’t have a crutch. I was using [alcohol] to drown all kinds of different things in me. I didn’t have anything else at the time. Over time I have had a whole bunch of things: hot yoga, mediation, qigong” – a system of breathing exercises and hand and arm movements – “or getting in the cold water every day. It’s these things that connect us to nature. Or just disconnect us from algorithms for a bit.”
Lightbody went to school in Bangor and Belfast, then left for college in Dundee, in Scotland, in 1994. Growing up during the Troubles, he felt detached from Northern Ireland and its divisions.
“It wasn’t normal, and I didn’t understand it at the time, which is why I wanted to leave. I talked about this many times on Northern Irish news. It’s not as if I’ve never told this truth to people of this place before. Or tried to hide it in any way,” he says. “I didn’t understand Northern Ireland when I was growing up. It was only after I left that I felt called back. I’ve had a place here now for 20 years, and now I live here full time.”
Snow Patrol’s first two albums came and went without anyone noticing. But Final Straw was a hit, and Snow Patrol never looked back. They’ve gone on to take their indie sound into the world of pop, including outside the band: between Snow Patrol records McDaid has a lucrative second career working with Ed Sheeran. (He co-wrote Sheeran’s Shape of You, which was at one point the most streamed tune ever.)
Lightbody collaborated with Taylor Swift on what is widely regarded as her best LP, Red. Duetting on the track The Last Time, they displayed impressive musical chemistry, and when Swift revisited the project for her Taylor’s Version re-recording, in 2021, she invited Lightbody back to do it all over again.
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“When I met Taylor it was through Ed. They were recording this song that she sang with Ed,” he says, referring to Everything Has Changed, from 2012. “I was in the studio with them and sang some backing vocals on that. I was in the room with the two biggest artists in the world – the thought doesn’t cross your mind, but how could they possibly have gotten bigger? But both of them have.”
He is pleased to report that fame changed neither Swift nor Sheeran – who recently played together at Wembley Stadium, during one of Swift’s Eras tour dates in London. “It couldn’t happen to better folk. They make such great, great music. Both Taylor and Ed write proper songs with heart and soul. Proper albums.”
Lightbody recalls befriending Sheeran when the Englishman was a puppyish teenager.
“I met Ed when he was 19 ... It was almost like a music conference in Switzerland. We met for the first time there. All of us went out drinking that night. The guy that I met was so kind and thoughtful and funny. He has not changed in 10, 11 years, whatever it is. It’s testament to him. He’s had so much fame and yet he’s the same guy he always was. It’s remarkable.”
In the 30 years since Snow Patrol began, the music industry has experienced countless upheavals, including file sharing, streaming and TikTok. Lightbody, however, continues to believe in the power of a fantastic song to cut through the noise.
“The industry seems to change every six months. As much as I sometimes bemoan modernity and want to escape it, I do also love it – the best parts of it. I don’t want to be stuck in the past. I want to live today – with all the technological things that are happening.”
Still, he’s ambivalent about streaming and services such as Spotify, which offer music at a knock-down price but have been criticised for not remunerating artists fairly. “It is great that music is accessible to people. I would love the musicians themselves to be remunerated better – young bands starting out that haven’t had the type of success we’ve had.”
Above all, he hopes the album remains the purest form of musical expression. “I want to keep the best bits of what I believe are the heart of music. And that is what the album is to me. There is no more perfect a moment as taking the cellophane off the vinyl you’ve just bought, putting in the turntable and turning it up. Oh God, it’s so good. Music is less without that experience. I hope that we keep it.”
The Forest Is the Path is released by Polydor on Friday, September 13th
