EMBRACE left the music scene on a high.

The Yorkshire quintet were chosen to record England's official football World Cup song in 2006 and had completed five UK tours following the huge success of their album, This New Day.

But then they disappeared. Behind the scenes the band had the lingering feeling they had outstayed their welcome.

"When you’re in a band it’s like a rollercoaster," said guitarist Richard McNamara.

"You get ups and downs and you don’t realise you’re on an up until you start coming down.

"I could sense that the rollercoaster was at the top and it was going to start coming down and I didn’t want to spend the next two or three years fighting to keep the success that we had. I just wanted to go out on a high."

Richard spent the time with his kids, Sonny, aged 11, and Ella, aged 14.

He added: "I wanted to see them grow up. I missed a lot of their early years through touring and being away so it felt like the right thing to do to have a break.

"We were only going to take a couple of years off but I actually enjoyed not having to get up at 6am to put make-up on to talk about football on GMTV!"

But taking a step back also gave the band time to think about what Embrace should be about.

They decided to go back to their roots and took their cue from a video of one of the band's earliest gigs in Leeds in 1989.

Richard added: "It was more like our influences like Joy Division, New Order, Smiths, House of Love and Echo and the Bunnymen.

"It had a dark twist and I thought: 'This is who we are'.

"Not the pandering, poppy, put-a-tambourine-on-everything rubbish that we’d done. It gave a real impetus and vision so we started writing music along those lines.

"The more we did it, the more committed we became to it and the more of our lives it took up to the point where we thought: ‘We’ve got an album here’."

The result was the band's self-titled fifth CD which saw the band experiment with a new electronic sound and reach the top five in the album charts.

Richard, who started playing guitar after listening to Iron Maiden, said: "The whole experience has been a great big buzz. We didn’t really know what to expect coming back. I think it’s been eight years since our previous gigs.

"You have people writing to you saying they miss your band and they want you back but we never really expected it to be quite so many.

"The best thing about being in this band is when you get on stage and after the first song the audience roar goes up. It reaffirms why you’re doing it."

Now Embrace are coming to Parr Hall on Tuesday, December 2 – a venue they have not been to since a gig with Doves in 2000 which was recorded for Radio 1.

"I remember it being a really great gig," Richard said.

"Time definitely speeds up as you get older. I can’t believe that was 14 years ago. When we started this band up I think I was 14!"

- Embrace play at the Parr Hall on December 2. Tickets are £19.50. Visit pyramidparrhall.com or call 442345.

DAVID MORGAN