To think of a period of time present, past or future without Modern Baseball is strange,” guitarist and vocalist Brendan Lukens admits. “I’ve known Jake [Ewald] literally forever. We were talking the other night about how I was moving around so much when I was growing up that I’ve never had friends this long before in my life.”

It’s clear during my time with Modern Baseball before their show in Liverpool’s modest Studio 2 that here are a band that need each other just as much as their fans need them. In their recent stellar documentary ‘Tripping In The Dark’ we saw an insight into the near fatal battle with bi-polar disorder that nearly took the life of Brendan. But it also brought the band closer than ever together. A story that has led to the “most open and honest” album of their career so far, with Brendan further saying in the documentary that “what we hope that with us opening up our personal lives to so many people, is that our fans can open up to everyone in their lives.”

Chatting to Brendan, partner in crime and fellow guitarist and vocalist Jake as well as bassist Ian Farmer, we delve a little deeper into a band that so many people are using to sound-track their everyday lives. “Bren and I were both writing songs in high school and we met and found out we liked a lot of the same music that we didn’t know anyone else liked. Stuff like Gaslight Anthem, Say Anything and Motion City Soundtrack. We used that as an opportunity to get together and write music,” Jake says, discussing the bands early days.

As far as early days go, they aren’t actually that far back for Modern Baseball. The band got together in Philadelphia in 2011 as Brendan and Luke met and became best friends. “We played together acoustically for a while and us clicking was pretty immediate from the first time we hung out,” Jake continues. “We just started writing and we were like ‘oh this is sick’. As far as the band goes it was pretty immediate. We kind of thought it would be a fluid project and have people coming and going. Then we practiced with Sean and Ian and we were like, ‘let’s just do this’.”

In 2012 the band released ‘Sports’, their first full length album recorded in their high school studio. Little did they know that their first effort would soon be considered one of the staples and modern classics of its genre. Twelve tracks about frustration, growing up, broken relationships and failed dreams to soundtrack the disenchanted youth either side of the Atlantic. The Wonder Years’ Dan Campbell even jokingly declares his envy in the documentary. “They were really good right out of the gate,” he says, “you should have heard some of the bullshit I used to write.”

“When asked if they expected ‘Sports’ to do so well as it did the band openly laugh. “No, not in the slightest. When Lame-O Records called and said they were doing 300 we were really worried they weren’t going to make their money back. We were very shocked to find that 5 weeks after it came out they were all sold out,” bassist Ian says with his seemingly eternal cheesy grin. The band are now on their 8th pressing of the album.

‘Sports’ led to mass popularity and tours that have seen the band travel all over the world. In 2014 they released their sophomore album ‘You’re Gonna Miss It All’ and will soon release their third album ‘Holy Ghost’. Miraculously, as I found out sitting with the trio (drummer Sean was busy elsewhere) they only graduated from college a few weeks before this conversation, in mid-April 2016. “It was difficult. Luckily we had really good school advisers. We were lucky enough to basically be at the right place at the right time,” Brendan says of his Communications Studies, whereas Jake and Ian were covering Music Recording. “The touring opportunities we were getting were really cool, we weren’t just diving into the oblivion,” Jake adds.

“It’s hard as fuck but it’s definitely possible. It only took 6 years,” Ian half-jokes.

“I like ‘Holy Ghost’ a lot as the material from my side is completely different to Jake’s. Jake’s side of ‘Holy Ghost’ is my album of the year.