“Book shops are wonderful places,” Dale Grundle is telling me over the rim of his pint of Guinness. “I was getting turned on to writers and poets all the time by people I worked with. But then the novelty kind of wore thin, and I just woke up and thought ‘Hold on, what am I doing? I’m supposed to be doing the other thing.’”

It’s 1993; Grundle and several of his schoolmates, aka Portstewart band Catchers, have just finished their A-Levels. They sign to Setanta Records, move to London, release a couple of well-received albums, support indie heavyweights like Pulp and Oasis, and promptly fizzle out a few years later. Grundle subsequently took his first 9-5 job in aforementioned book shop – until the thrill of performing lured him back into the fray. Enter The Sleeping Years.
“I felt really lost in the world,” he explains. “Music fills gaps in my life and gives me more than anything else, so I kind of have to do it. But I didn’t want to go into it and be very jaded about the industry, and I didn’t want to make another Catchers record, either. I wanted to trim it away.”
The Sleeping Years, a folky, acoustic-centric quartet, are certainly a good deal less ‘jangle-pop’ than Grundle’s former outfit; their recently-released debut album We’re Becoming Islands One By One sounds like a cross between Bright Eyes and a less ostentatious Duke Special, thanks to that still-intact Northern accent.
“When I started The Sleeping Years, I was doing it all myself, so it had to be simple to work,” he says. “A lot of artists use laptops and have backing tracks, or use loop pedals, but I find that very boring. I hate turning up to concerts and hearing one idea being slowly developed over an hour. I wanted to use what I had, and not use trickery; just try to get your emotions across, just connect with someone through your voice.”
It’s a formula that’s served him well thus far; The Sleeping Years are currently enjoying a moderate level of success in Europe, perhaps a vestige of Catchers’ legacy. It must be strange, I wager, to be back in the business after a seven-year absence, considering the dynamism of the music industry and the fact that the internet now plays a huge role.
“One of the strange things for me with this album was that it leaked,” he nods. “When Catchers put records out, that just didn’t exist. I didn’t know how to deal with it. At the same time, our MySpace hits went up tenfold, or something. So it’s just coming to terms with how the environment’s changed – it’s definitely got its plusses.”