Last updated 11:40, Thursday, 19 June 2008

DURING 2006 The Feeling were the most-played band on UK radio. On average during those 12 months, singles such as Fill My Little World, Never Be Lonely and Love It When You Call were played by one station or another an astonishing 267 times a day.

The five-piece also managed to sell more than 500,000 copies of their debut album Twelve Stops And Home (it’s since doubled that amount) while around 115,000 people bought tickets to their shows.

They’ll be adding to that figure this month, as they take to the UK's roads again supporting Bon Jovi. They play: Hampden Park, Glasgow, on Saturday; City of Manchester Stadium on Sunday; T In The Park, Balado, July 12.

Bassist Richard Jones met The Feeling’s singer and main songwriter Dan Gillespie Sells (pictured) at the BRIT stage school in Croydon when they were 16. They played in various bands together before The Feeling’s line-up – which also consists of drummer Paul Stewart, guitarist Kevin Jeremiah and keyboard player Ciaran Jeremiah – was cemented.

“The band was formed around Dan’s songs originally,” says Jones. “I knew a lot of them, but he’d done them as big demos so I almost didn’t hear how good they were because they were all very produced and his voice was very quiet on them.

“One day, he just played them to me acoustically – I think Sewn, Fill My Little World, Kettle’s On and Strange – and I couldn’t believe it. They were great, and he’d been sitting on them all those years. I said straight away I wanted to be involved, so we got Paul, Kev and Ciaran and formed the band.”

The debut album was soon recorded, and finally hit shop shelves in June 2006. Second long player Join With Us, was released in February. The epic Greatest Show On Earth, which closes the album, is among the stand out tracks, but if it wasn’t for a bit of snooping on Jones’ part the song might never have been heard.

“Dan writes all the time but I’m the one who gets the songs out of him. I have literally gone onto his computer and sifted through stuff and found things that he’s forgotten he even did.

“There’s so much material knocking around at the moment in the band, that we didn’t feel under pressure with that classic ’second album syndrome’ people talk about.”