Kaiser Chiefs: "We're like a little football club – we have a huddle"

The Kaiser Chiefs are on a tour that will take them to Brazil, Chile and Europe promoting Souvenir, their singles collection which features recordings from 2004-2012.

Fans are in store for a night of hits, with songs like Oh My God, Ruby, I Predict a Riot, Never Miss A Beat, Everything is Average Nowadays, The Angry Mob and Listen to Your Head, among others.

The band see the release of their Souvenir album as a watershed.

"It's not that you feel old, but I still feel like I'm watching a different person and there's this other me that's been in a band for the past eight years."

The band have shown a dedication to duty during their years in the limelight: on one occasion they invited a girl called Ruby to meet them backstage after she had been bullied because of their number one hit.

"We invited her backstage to apologise for all the hassle it caused her. It's quite a sweet story. The song itself came from something unrelated. We've kind of left the story of who or what Ruby is to history, but it wasn't about that girl."

The band took their name from a South African football club, Kaizer Chiefs. They even have a football-team-like group huddle before each gig.

"Yeah. We're like a little football club – for some band members it's more superstition that if we don't something will go wrong and all the strings will fall off the guitars.

The band are conscious of ever-shifting fashions and fear for the future of guitar music. It's not going to die completely, but it is in danger.

"If you look at the charts, you see two guitar songs in the top 40 – that's sad.

"I just hope kids don't stop picking up guitars and learning Beatles riffs or Black Sabbath or whatever.

"I strongly believe in lugging your gear in and out of a van and playing to five people in a pub – it gives you passion."

The band's present tour started in Carlisle on February 11.