'It’s certainly been a fun experiment': Keane talk ahead of Birmingham show

And now they are back with a brand new album, Cause and Effect, which is out today, and major tour, which reaches Birmingham’s Symphony Hall on Tuesday.

Their four previous albums all entered the UK charts at number 1 and accumulated sales of over 13m worldwide with 2.6 billion streams.

The band’s lead singer, Tom Chaplin, is thrilled that the band are back on the road.

“It’s certainly been a fun experiment,” he says. “We’ve managed to pack in as many festivals as possible over the summer and the response of the fans has been lovely.

“You do fear that if you go away for a long period of time that people will forget who you are. But it’s great seeing that those people out there who’ve loved Keane’s music haven’t gone away.”

The emotional resonance of Keane songs has always been at the heart of their work. It propelled their debut, Hopes and Fears, to number one as it sold 2.8 million copies in the UK and six million around the world, helping them to collect a staggering nine UK platinum discs.

Tom says: “The music has always had a sort of epic quality and I think it’s also down to Tim writing the songs to show the power of my voice. But also I think, like a lot of British men, we’re not very good at expressing our emotions but we’ve discovered that music is a great vehicle for us to open up and it’s always been at the heart of the songs.”

While the band were in hiatus, Tom took time out to record his own solo album, The Wave. It helped him to address a number of issues, not least his drug addiction and the catastrophic effect that it had on his relationships.

“At that time I was still in the bout of my problems with addiction and my mental health suffered greatly so I was forced into becoming much more of an open person,” he says.

“That’s the only antidote really to those problems is to be able to talk about them with another human being.

“And then with the solo album it was so confessional and raw that it didn’t really feel that hard then to talk to journalists and go on stage and talk to audiences. With ‘Cause and Effect’ at the same time that I was going through all my problems with addiction and it was all coming to a head, I guess Tim’s life was in a bit of a freefall really with his marital breakdown.

“So the songs document that in a very honest way.” Because more than any other Keane record that we’ve made, I think this one is the most bare, raw and direct.”

Now , he’s thrilled to be back with his fellow band mates and heading out on the road.

He says the bonds that tie Keane together remain redoubtable and have seen them through the toughest of times.

“It’s been a lifelong journey,” he says. “Tim’s (Rice-Oxley’s) Mum and Dad are my godparents, we grew up in the same town and I remember Tim writing songs when I was six.”

“Then obviously my singing developed when we were teenagers and then we were like right let’s form a band. It was all just like a bit of a crazy dream, it’s been a part of our lives for 25-30 years, so it’s a very long journey. I would describe it as a slow start with a frustrating beginning. We struggled for a long time to try and find our inner voice musically whether that was the songwriting, my singing or how we would present ourselves. So that took a lot of time and a lot of knockbacks. And just all at the same time it randomly fell into place after a lot of hard work. I think the journey from then has just been about trying to find the right things to write about, that we felt energised creatively by.”