HOWZAT

“We ran away from it in a way,” says Keating. “When I look back, probably the unhappiest time that I’ve spent in the Frank and Walters coincided with the time that we were commercially most successful. I found it very hard to do the whole mainstream thing. Being in Tesco and having mothers coming up asking you to sign autographs for their daughters, that was scary. I don’t think we were cut out for it.

“We hid our true feelings behind those uniforms. I guess it went against us, but that was the way people picked up on us. The thing is, we never had a plan. We have probably committed commercial suicide over the years: going away after our first album and not coming back with the second one for nearly four years was madness, but if we had rushed out a second album, one of us mightn’t be here at all.”

Instead, from 1997 onwards, when they released their second album, Grand Parade, the group contented themselves with a gradually diminishing indie cult status that seemed to reach an endgame with Glass, their misfired electro-pop-flavoured album from 2000. While Linehan says that their commercial decline had little impact on his songwriting output, the end of their relationship with Setanta was a different story, however.

“It’s like getting sacked from your job. It was a bit of blow to take, I must admit, and I thought, God, your career is over,” says the singer, before adding: “Just when we were about to give up, one thing changed my mind: I realised that I want to make people happy with the music. I’d rather be anonymous — that’s my natural way — but I still like expressing myself through music. I do find it therapeutic writing songs and getting stuff off my chest. I’d be lost only for music.”

Despite the occasional lapses into Forrest Gump-style sincerity, throughout their career the Frank and Walters have displayed a tenacity missing from most of their peers. Although Souvenirs is a curiously backward-looking return, since Linehan started to write again in the wake of his brother’s departure, the laid-back Frank and Walters have displayed an impressive sense of purpose.

They bought back their master tapes (from which the material on Souvenirs is culled) when Setanta put them up for sale, they have secured distribution deals in the UK and Japan for the album and played sellout shows in London. With tours in America, Europe and even China on the cards, the next priority is a return to the studio, with a long-overdue album of new songs to follow next year. The big time may no longer beckon, but the Frank and Walters still want to have the last laugh.

“The ideal situation for me is to be able to sell enough records to get the money to make the next one,” says Keating. “I don’t think our appeal is broad enough for million-seller records, and we never aspired to that anyway. But a highlight for me is just getting to where we are today.

“There are so many friends of ours who have been in bands and they’ve just packed it in, but there doesn’t seem to be any natural reason for us to pack it in. There’s a sense of unfinished business with the Frank and Walters.”

Souvenirs is released on Fifa records. The Frank and Walters Irish tour begins later this month