An emerging musical force from Ireland, Two Door Cinema Club is taking North America by storm on the heels of their new release Beacon and it’s searing lead single, Sleep Alone. Joe Leary spent 24 seconds with lead singer Alex Trimble.

24: Being an Irish band and hearing elements of the U2 type sound in your music, were they somewhat of an inspiration to you?

AT: U2 have never really been a direct influence but the fact that they had something different about them; the fact that they stood out; they had this rhythm section that was doing something interesting and the Edge was using a guitar in a completely different way and Bono’s vocals are something else and no one sounds like him. For us we were kind of interested in all these different kinds of music. We loved that stadium rock stuff but we also loved alternative rock, dance music, pop music and folk so we decided that rather than pigeon-hole ourselves into one particular genre, we would invite everything in. As a result, that kind of gave us something that set us apart.

Over the years, people have struggled to sort of identify our band and decide what it is. At the start, Europe perceived us as a dance band while America perceived us as a rock band, and in Japan we were a pop band. It was really nice that no one knew what we were. That definitely came from listening to these bands out of Ireland like U2, Snow Patrol, Ash … The Divine Comedy. This music all came from the same place but all had its own unique quality. Ours as well, and I think we succeeded.

24: When you achieve acclaim in your native land as you did, do you then set a bar for yourself to do it elsewhere or do you just see where success takes you?

AT: We set ourselves certain goals but they’re very non-descript. We have an idea of where we roughly want to be in a couple years time. It’s mostly just going along with the ride; things come up that you don’t really expect. We came over to North America a few weeks ago after getting offered a TV show with Jimmy Fallon. That was something that hadn’t been planned and it was awesome. We’ve since been offered more TV on the West Coast. It’s not something that we were knocking on the door for, it just came along naturally and it’s kind of the way we’ve always done things. We’ve never really thrown ourselves in people’s faces. If things come naturally and people discover us for themselves, I think it develops a stronger connection with the audience.

That was the way it was with bands for us when we were growing up. If we discovered a band on our own without advertising and radio play and all of that, there was an extra loyalty to that band. That’s the way we wanted to start; by word of mouth and the Internet helped a lot. It was just about a gradual growth, and growing with the audience as well, rather than forcing anything really. We didn’t want anything to come across as contrived or artificial.

24: You’ve got an incredible voice and can really wail. Where did that develop?

AT: I was actually a really shy child and was almost embarrassed to sing. The three of us formed our first band when we were 14 or 15 and needed a singer. I thought I would give it a go and I was really kind of nervous. I just started singing everyday and joined a choir in school. It was more just finding the love for it and losing inhibitions.

All I’ve really wanted to do since I got my first guitar was to write songs and I was gonna write songs that I had to sing.

24: What’s the story behind the name Two Door Cinema Club?

AT: We were named after a local private cinema owned by this guy, (it was) in his backyard, called the Tudor Cinema. We went there as teenagers. The guy would rent it out for a nominal fee and you could play your own films there. This friend of ours was a filmmaker and would play his films there so we had this connection and love for the cinema.

We were throwing around ideas for a band name and (guitarist) Sam Halliday came up with Two Door Cinema Club. We liked it and thought it was unique. Once he explained the whole mispronunciation, it was something that we bonded over because it was kind of hilarious to us that Sam had mistaken the name after all these years of the cinema. It also had a connection to something from home.