Quotes from Dan Smith

It's such an interesting experience seeing how different people react to music and the generosity of some and the craziness of others - people who go see bands in different countries, know all the words to the songs, and get tattoos. It's so unexpected.

Playing new songs at festivals is weird, obviously. People at festivals are always a bit drunk, and probably just want to hear stuff they know by bands they love, or are checking you out and don't know your stuff very well.

I listen to unhealthy amount of Kanye. The Fugees. Also, 'The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.'

I'm not interested in writing overtly autobiographical songs. I would rather explore interesting stories. I like the idea of the songs being evocative and distinctive, so I have in my mind the atmosphere that a film could evoke. I like to think of them existing in their own little world.

In 'Good Grief', in trying to create this sense of the huge downs and ups, stumbles of this process, we're almost using the music to make it uplifting, so it's not completely hopeless.

I know who buys our music: we have such a diverse fanbase.

I write songs, but the guys play on them, they have opinions on them, and we tour together and spend all our time together.

I think everyone has such varied taste in music.

The idea of doing film and music together is an absolute dream.

There's a lot of variety in our gigs, our records, our mixtapes, and our videos.

I think there's some people that absolutely love attention, and I'm not necessarily one of those people, but we're so, so lucky to be able to do this with our lives. There are certain aspects that maybe are not amazing, like having to represent us.

There haven't been many examples of times when we've done a cover and not put it out in some form.

Lip synching in a video is usually my idea of hell.