How did this acoustic set idea came up?

We started doing it probably about 12 years ago, I think it was because when Steve (Craddock) was working with Paul Weller at the time and we suddenly found that we had time on our hands and we thought, ‘Well we could do these songs in this format , which is how they were originally written really’.

You have said yourself Ocean Colour Scene are a Heritage Band, would you argue this is your way of keeping things fresh?

I guess so... Yeah it’s a way for us to go and play at places Ocean Colour Scene (OCS) probably wouldn’t usually play at. So we play at more out the way places, smaller festivals. As a band this year we are only doing, I think, one gig of OCS stuff because we did so much last year that we’re going to have a bit of a break.

You’ve often been noted saying you prefer the folk side rather than the rock part, would you say this acoustic set helps to bring out the real you?

I’m pretty ham-fisted with an electric guitar (laughs). I’m a strummer, so it’s the way I would naturally play and perform. Whether you want to call that folk music or not, I don’t know. My early influences were Bob Dylan and Neil Young as I was learning the guitar as a child, so I sort of did what they did really.

Do you miss the Britpop era at all?

There was a great few lines from Noel Gallagher who said about OCS being the second best band in Britain and then Steve Craddock (guitarist in OCS) responding by saying ‘It’s nice to be put behind The Beatles’. Well it was encouraged I think because the press really got into the Blur/ Oasis thing didn’t they, and really what everyone else was doing was playing the past, you know.

They were playing The Beatles and The Stones and ultimately it sells records and magazines and it was having that rivalry. I mean who is going to have that rivalry now? Jake Bugg and Ed Sheeran?

When you wrote albums, did you aim to write something better than the last or was it a case of trying something different?

I don’t really plan it like that, you just sit down and I would start writing songs and that’s how they are planned really.

At Split Festival this year, you take to the stage immediately before Dizzee Rascal, what are your feelings on such a diverse line-up?

I guess the idea behind that is that you have to cater for a large age group of people and that’s exactly why they do it. It’s always the same, look at the Glastonbury line-ups, you’ve got everything you could want. As a festival, that’s what you should aim to be doing, and Split are doing that.

  • Split 2014 is the weekend of August 9 and 10. splitfestival.com