Travis are not very rock'n'roll rock'n'rollers: discuss.

I realised early on that you don't need attitude on stage, giving it some to people who've paid money to come hear songs. I hate bands who do that! It's all been done after the first hotel room was trashed. It's boring. I like the idea of going along to a gig and losing yourself, almost forgetting there's a band on stage. Every now and then you look up and there's a visual anchor. But for us, it's become less 'up-front' and more in the back, in the engine room. We've been piling in loads of coal!

Isn't part of the function of a band to be heroes or idols?

Bands don't matter. Bands are just a medium like TV or the internet. You can't play a song 200 times a day; so to me radio is above bands. If bands are making art, they're just picking up the stuff that's already there. It just comes through them.

But Travis are so becoming successful - and you so idolised - that the painter might obscure the art.

I don't think it will. We've just got to write... not better songs, but equally good songs that you can hide behind. Imagine standing on a stage singing a shite song that's done really well just because you're X Big Artist! I'd hate a time to come in our career when we were singing a duff tune, surrounded by Yes men, thinking it was fucking magic, having forgotten what it was that we were supposed to do: write good tunes.

You seem very driven; obsessed almost.

I feel that I'm running out of time. It's a mad mortality thing, totally weird. There's a timer going, and I've got to get as much done as possible. Then, again I might just be paranoid. I'll probably live to a ripe old age. Maybe I've got that thing Keats had... aye, melancholia!

Your new-found millions must bring you happiness, though.

Thing is, you think you're in control, but you're being controlled - you must have this car, you must have this house. But when you hear a piece of music it fucks all that up, cos there are four things that will level you: birth, death, art, humanity. And everything else just doesn't exist, it's extra. It all just gets in the way. When you hear a song, it takes you back to those four things. Good songs flip time on its side.

— Interview by Craig McLean