As former Keane singer Tom Chaplin launches his first solo album, he tells Neil McCormick how he beat the drugs that almost killed him

"I thought I was going to die,” says Tom Chaplin, with grave earnestness. “I’ve had that feeling before but this time it was very intense. I had been on a massive bender for days and I couldn’t breathe, I was having a panic attack, I was standing next to a wall thinking, I’m going to keel over and that’s it.”

Chaplin is talking about the exact moment his life changed, one night in early 2015. As the baby-faced, angelic-voiced singer in multi-million selling band Keane, he became, in his own description, “a raging drug addict”.

Now he is back, with a powerful debut solo album, The Wave, in which he addresses his struggle with personal darkness and redemption. One song, Worthless Words, vividly deals with the day Chaplin thought he was dying.