Lonely The Brave – Yellow Arch

Time, it’s often said, is a great healer. Lonely The Brave would attest to as much.

It has been a decade, after all, since the beloved Cambridge band and their extraordinary founding vocalist, Dave Jakes, last shared a stage together. Back then, they were fast making a name for themselves as one of the leading lights in a new wave of British rock, rising off the back of thrilling debut album The Day’s War – a UK top 15 release, featuring the seismic singles Backroads; The Blue, The Green; and Trick Of The Light – and its highly accomplished, emotive follow-up, Things Will Matter. They were records that led to Lonely The Brave standing on stages alongside Deftones, Biffy Clyro and Bruce Springsteen; records that saw the quintet steal hearts and minds with their soaring melodies and transcendent choruses at festivals across the UK and Europe including Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds, Download France. Tastemaker champions including BBC Radio, The Guardian, Kerrang!, NME and more fell at their feet.

And then, in an instant, the shock news that Jakes would be stepping away from the band in order to pay greater care and attention to his mental health.

It’s true of time, too, that it waits for no man. And so the years that followed saw Lonely The Brave continue in a new form, while Jakes would eventually return to the public eye, launching music under differing banners. Yet as all five men – Jakes, guitarists Mark Trotter and Ross Smithwick, bassist Andrew Bushen and drummer Mo Edgeley – grew, matured, and found new perspective on life, the loss of what they once had was never far from mind. In 2021, when Jakes and Trotter’s fledgling reconnection, instigated by the frontman, yielded tentative sketches for new music – “We didn’t see each other again for a few years,” Jakes says, “but that song was always sitting there on my laptop…” – the seed was planted from which something far greater would eventually blossom as 2025 faded into 2026.

The return of Lonely The Brave in their original and most cherished form will be celebrated fanatically by their adoring audience, but none so more than by the men who call the band home.

“This means everything to us,” says Trotter, simply. “Reuniting with each other to write and to play has been an explosion of colour in a life that has felt so grey for so long. We are all extremely grateful to those that have kept the fire alight in this band across the years. We never wanted it to ‘be the same’ after Dave’s departure, but the foundation of the band had fundamentally shifted. The five of us are intrinsically linked through our shared experience. We have always loved each other dearly but, with hindsight, we needed that separation to see clearly after all we had been through together over the years.”

It is therefore with a “renewed sense of respect, love, support, care and gratitude that we have for each other” that they come together again, Trotter says. Jakes agrees: “Those first few years of LTB were pretty crazy, and it left us in a bad place,” he admits. “But we’re different people now, who look after ourselves and each other differently.”

It is such a mindset that has focused thoughts not on the past, but the future. “We want this to be a celebration of what went before, but this is not about nostalgia,” states Trotter. “Our first priority upon getting back together was, and always will be, writing new music. Time and experience have taught us how to get the best out of each other.” “Creatively, we’re in a great place,” Jakes concurs. And though eyes are trained on the band’s live return this November – their first headline shows together almost 10 years to the day – the vocalist promises that fans eager for new material will not be kept waiting long. “It’s exciting to think of what a Lonely The Brave setlist will look like going forward – and beyond…” he teases.

All of which, of course, will be revealed in the fullness of time. “This is such a special moment for all of us,” Trotters says in conclusion. “I still remember hearing Dave on record for the very first time, all those years ago, and saying to myself that I would dedicate my life to standing on stage with that man. Today, I still feel exactly the same.”