“In 2005 we did a load of gigs around the country and Neil went away to Toronto with some friends of his, for the summer as a last hurrah before they all got real jobs. Myself and Ciaran and Ross decided to go away as well for a holiday, Ross had a couple of friends near New York.

 

When we were over there we went to this festival called the Curiosity, the Cure were headlining it. We just found out about it when we got over there and ended up on some wild goose chase using buses and trains and climbing over ditches to get to the festival. I can’t even remember the name of the place where it was.”

It was a journey to rival the quest of a lover in search of a muse. Ross, their drummer, was chasing the musical version.

“Mark Carolan is Muse’s live engineer and Ross was a huge fan of his so when Muse were playing at this festival on the back of a trailer, the lads sort of chanced their arm. Mark was on the sound desk, and went up to say hello, I don’t know if Ross did much talking, he was probably awe struck at the time, but Ciaran has no problem talking to anyone so we sent Mark some demos and when he had a bit of time off he got back on to us and we recorded an EP with him.”

 

Unchartered territory was always going to be their destiny if they were to succeed, it’s surprising that their development from bit part players in a group content to play covers at a theme night would cover so much new ground. Are they different, though? For a while Ireland was populated by a glut of singer/songwriters who created their own scene that was as much confined as it was celebrated.

“Our mission is still the same, to make good music that has an integrity and an honesty to it,” says Yourell.

“We were always conscious that we were as much a live band as a studio band and we knew that recording an album was very expensive. It’s hard to get your music out there, it’s hard to get it released and promoted. We funded the album ourselves, we’re lucky that we’ve got a big support network of family and friends, and from the start we always sought out people for advice and there’s been so many cases of bands being screwed over and being landed with debts you never knew existed.”

 

In Love with Detail has been released under their own steam and in their own timeframe. For all the places they’ve travelled to succour their star at home, the formula is a simple one most of the time.

“The way we write songs, there’s not a singular song writer, they come about in different ways, sometime it’s just the four of us just jamming together in a room or other times someone might have the bones of a song and the rest of us work on it. For Stop, we had the chorus fairly quickly.”

After that the challenge remains pretty much the same. Gigging to an audience comprised of sympathetic ears is one thing, convincing a neutral audience that Delorentos are a band worthy of attention, is something they’re still working on.

 

“We’re still relatively unknown in Ireland, so we’re still well used to going to places and having to win people over. Those gigs can be just as enjoyable as a full tent at Oxegen because there’s a challenge involved. You’re only as good as your last gig, that’s true. When you start out you’re delighted to get a gig. That’s how we ended up at UCD. An events officer in a college like UCD and Trinity has a fairly big budget so you’ve got to deliver a proper event for several thousand students, nobody wants to put on a band like us then. It’s frustrating because you just want the opportunity to play but it’s perfectly understandable at the same time.”

 

What you don’t know you fear, roughly translated into the music industry is what you don’t always have access to, you want. Achievement in a foreign climate is a spur for domestic success. Does one compliment the other or is the idea that an Irish band has to crack borders the same for every other band?

 

“If the Kings of Leon come over here, they’ve got their shit cool accents, they’re not from here, you’re not going to see them everyday. It was a similar thing over in Italy, we got on very well with all the other acts. We were talking to a Danish band who said we’d go down well with a Danish audience. I think if you get validation from somewhere else maybe you’re more accepted by your own people. I don’t think it’s specific to Irish people, the bands we were talking to were saying it’s just as hard to get things in their own countries. We tend to think that we’re very hard done by. The Italian band were saying to us that they can’t really make it in a big way if they don’t sing in English yet that would be seen in Italy as selling out if you’re not singing in Italian.”

 

When Delorentos are singing, their language of choice is personal experience, mostly, but they don’t subscribe to the idea that dark lives equate to bright artists. Unlike Whipping Boy who sang about dark subjects at a time when Ireland was a much darker place, Delorentos are happy to be happy, as it were.

 

“I guess the thing is we do our best and try to write songs that are true to us and try and be honest in our songs, there’s nothing contrived about the band. The more you’re known, the more people aren’t going to like you. It’s funny it’s easier not to appreciate the people who say nice things, it’s the negative comments that sting. It’s a natural human thing to want to be liked. Most of the time people who are happy and enjoying things are less likely to say it than people who are disgruntled with things. We’re not going to change our music because one or two people don’t like it.”

 

Happy, determined, ambitious, bright and looking forward. Delorentos have a future but maybe like Ireland, the future had to begin abroad.