Sophie Stratford talks to Josh Franceschi lead vocalist from You Me At Six about the band’s headline tour, new album Hold Me Down and obsessive fans.

YOU Me At Six enjoyed the rise to fame in 2007 with the success of debut album, Take Off Your Colours, which included singles such as Save It for the Bedroom and Finder’s Keepers, but it took a romantic setback to shape the sound of newlyreleased album Hold Me Down.

The band launches a UK headline tour in Newcastle on Saturday, with frontman Josh Franceschi announcing: “It is probably one of the best sets we’ve ever had, so it’s exciting. Our set will include about half of each album but we will be playing the ‘hits’ or whatever you like to call them too of course”

The band now a more mature sound with Franceschi explaing: “With Hold Me Down, the band sounds more confident and we’ve come on in leaps and bounds, it is a pretty strong record. I love listening to it and I love playing the songs on it.

“We just sat down and started to write a bunch of songs that we thought sounded good, and had strong choruses, and that’s how musically the album came around.

Lyrically it was based on stuff that was going on at the time in my life.

Ironically enough, me and my girlfriend broke up after two years and the album would have been completely different if it wasn’t for that.

“I re-wrote a few songs to go with my mood and originally some had different titles so I changed them, and looking back on it now, I’m kind of glad it happened as it has really shaped the album and some of our best songs came from it.”

He admits the band struggled at first because they were just trying to figure out what kind of music they wanted to play and how they wanted to come across.

“In this country we are in a really good position where I feel we have a really strong fan base, but they don’t want us to do the run-of-the-mill stuff.

If we had just written Take Of Your Colours Part 2 I don’t think our band or fan base would have progressed, but with it being around two years since the first album came out, “I feel our fans have grown up with us, and hopefully that will continue to happen,” he says.

Rock bands like YM@6 deal with obsessive fans in many different ways however Franceschi’s method is fairly simple. “I always try to run in the other direction when I see fans. There was this one girl who used to come to every show we did, wherever it was she would be there, and then she stopped because she got a bit insane.

“She used to say she was Dan’s (Flint, drums) sister and said that myself and Matt (Barnes, bass guitar) got her pregnant and she used to tell people in the queue these things. I think our fans realised we were not into the whole hysteria thing, I don’t particularly like it when a group of people come running up to me screaming.

“It almost puts me off, because I’m quite a shy person. I’d much rather have a cool chat with them for five minutes. We will always do photos and sign things however I’d much rather talk to somebody than have them scream in my face,” he says.

When asked who would most likely make a mistake on stage, Franceschi replies: “Well we can be pretty accident prone, the one who never makes mistakes would have to be Chris (Miller – lead guitar), but I forget lyrics and Matt (Barnes – bass guitar) tends to slip up. But you never know.”

On 2010 and the future, the singer reveals that the band has got many festival plans under their belt and “We are now getting to a point where we can go and headline shows all around the world, that is the aim and plan.”

■ You Me At Six play Newcastle O2 Academy on Saturday