“You have your whole life to write your first record”, says Lonely the Brave’s lead guitarist Mark Trotter as I spoke to him outside the Cambridge Corn Exchange. It’s the day of the release of their second album Things Will Matter. Just like its predecessor, The Day’s War, Things Will Matter immediately topped the iTunes rock charts. Self-described as “doom pop”, the album contains heavy guitar riffs and chilly vocals.

But Mark believes their music has changed massively since then: “We’re very different people from the guys that wrote the first record, I mean, [for] the first record we were a four-piece band”. Their new found experience with the music industry has changed them, “we’re not quite as green in the music industry”, as well as more personal circumstances, “two of us became dads. So just so many things – everything’s changed”. The previous four-piece has also added a new member, guitarist Ross Smithwick. Mark summarises new the album: “it’s a lot darker from the first record, but still us.”

Mark speaks fondly of ‘Jaws of Hell’, the penultimate song on the album. “It kicked my arse for about two years trying to get it right”. Hearing the “original riff for it from years ago” was a shock. He exclaims, “Oh my God, it’s so different!”. He singles out ‘Jaws of Hell’ because it’s “more of a classic Lonely the Brave song, where it starts in one place and ends up in a completely different one. So, that’s why I like it.”

For the local band, playing their homecoming show at the Corn Exchange is a big deal: “I came for my first ever proper gig here when I was about 15 and my sister bought [tickets] for my birthday, so to be here headlining is pretty special, it’s pretty cool. Everyone’s been so supportive forever in Cambridge, we’ve been so lucky that we’ve always had a fan base. To be in the biggest venue in Cambridge, headlining a show is…” Mark mimics his mind being blown with his hands, then laughs, “I don’t know how you write [that] in a magazine.” The gig is especially important because they’ve “got so many family and friends coming down”.

Mark continues, “we’ve all grown up here so, you know, it’s the same as the title of the album, ‘Things Will Matter’; everything that happens to you, everything, the environment you grow up in, the people you know, the life you lead, everything affects you.”

“Growing up here has shaped us a band and we always get people saying that our music reminds them of scenery and things like that and it kind of does for me as well, it reminds me of the fens, for some weird reason, because we live here. It’s shaped everything really.”

Mark emphasises that there’s only thing on their minds for the future: “touring, touring, touring, touring, touring. So we’re touring this run for another couple of months. And then, just festivals throughout the whole summer and it should be great fun, and then another tour after that, and probably into the next year we’ll just be touring solidly”.

But fans shouldn’t be disappointed, he did let slip that “there may be some more music coming up shortly as well that we’re gonna—maybe! I can’t tell you too much about that. But I kind of just did…”