And the Hello hello this is Brian here with Simon and welcoming you to another edition of So the Jaker on songwriting.

Joining us for episode 275 are two Northern Irish musicians, songwriters and core members

of one of the Emerald Isle's most successful cultural exports, Snow Patrol.

As this episode reaches the feeds, they've recently dropped their eighth studio album,

and first in six years, The Forest is the Path, produced by our former guest, Fraser T. Smith. We are delighted to welcome

Snow Patrol's Gary Light Body and Johnny McDade to the show.

Originally called Shrug, the band was formed in 1994 in Dundee, Scotland by Gary, bassist Mark

McClelland and drummer Michael Morrison while he was students at the University of Dundee.

They renamed themselves Polar Bear in 1996 before finally settling on Snow Patrol the following year

when they signed to Indie label Jeepster and Johnny Quinn commandeered the Drumstool.

Their first two albums, 1998 Songs for Polar Bears and 2001's When It's All Over, we still have to clear up,

were reviewed positively but failed to sell, and consequently they were dropped by Jeepster.

Every cloud has a silver lining, however, and they were snapped up by fiction in 2002, the same year that Nathan Connolly joined on League guitar.

Snow Patrol's major label debut 2003's Final Straw, their first collaboration with US producer Garrett Jack Knife Lee, ultimately when five times platinum,

spawned the hit singles run and spitting games, and won the 2004 Ivan Navello for Best Album.

However, the album hadn't been an instant success. It wasn't until then

Radio 1 DJ Joe Wiley played the full length album version of Run on the afternoon show that the

sales juggernaut was set in motion. McCelland left the band in 2005 to be replaced by Paul Wilson

prior to the release of 2006's Eyes Wide Open,

which was a UK number one,

and in Chasing Cars yielded what was to become the most played song of the decade.

The album itself is now one of the best selling in UK chart history.

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