Although the boys of Snow Patrol have been around for almost ten years now, it’s their third album, Final Straw, that’s creating quite a buzz. So where have they been in the meantime? Battling manufactured pop, “Five years ago, things were really bad and I remember playing at that time and trying to sell our records. But you see what’s around you and everyone was at dance clubs,” says drummer Jonny Quinn. “And you even get students from university that came to us and said, I like Westlife…C’mon, you’re 21, what’s wrong with you!’”

That wasn’t all the band was battling. Initially called Polar Bear, a title also used by ex-Jane’s Addiction bassist, Eric Avery, the members had to rethink their band name in the wake of threat of a lawsuit. They were with a small music label and couldn’t afford to fight it, and had to come up with something quick. And this is how they decided on their new name, “For the longest time, one of our best friends couldn’t remember our band name, so he came around and called us Snow Patrol, explains Jonny, “So we decided to replace Polar Bear with Snow Patrol, but our buddy has just gotten used to calling us Polar Bear and we had to break it to him that he should go back to calling us Snow Patrol instead.” Snow Patrol proudly supports controlarms.org, a campaign for stricter gun control run jointly by Amnesty International, Oxfam and IANSA.

Snow Patrol proudly supports controlarms.org, a campaign for stricter gun control run jointly by Amnesty International, Oxfam and IANSA.