EXCITED is a word which crops up a lot during a conversation with Busted’s Matt Willis about the band’s tour which head to Manchester next week.

“Life is really cool right now,” admitted the band’s bassist. “It’s good to be back.”

Last year Busted played a series of arena shows, their first live dates for 11 years, which sold out in rapid time.

“To not have done anything for so long and go straight back to arenas was mind-blowing,” said Matt. “It was a very humbling experience to see fans cared so much.”

But rather than continue on the arena circuit reworking old material, Busted - Matt, Charlie Simpson and James Bourne - headed into the studio to write a new album Night Driver.

“The idea of touring and playing a bunch of old songs to people is fun and that’s why we did the last tour,” said Matt, “but I think in the back of our minds was that we wanted to make new music.”

The three of them had briefly got together in 2015 to record a couple of new songs and they found the experience so rewarding it changed their outlook completely.

“We were going to record an album first and then tour with that,” said Matt, “But once we’d had a little taster of writing together we didn’t want anyone interfering with it and wanted to make the record we wanted to make.

“So we decided to put the tour on sale first and with the money from that we were able to fund our own record and do it our way.”

Night Driver marks a complete change of direction for Busted, moving away from the punk pop which made them such favourites first time round instead adopting a more mature, electronic sound.

“For us the whole experience was like being a new band,” said Matt. “It was strange being in the studio again as we have this history and yet the way the record was created and the sound of it was totally new.”

Busted split after a phenomenal rise which saw them sell over five million albums around the world and have hits with singles such as Sleeping With the Light On and You Said No.

“It was crazy,” said Matt. “We did two arena tours off the back off two albums in one year. You look back and think that was full on but when you are in it, you are in a bubble and swept along We never really realised how big we were.”

But Matt has no regrets about the band splitting up.

“I’m super happy that we broke up when we did,” he said.

“It allowed us to come back together and make this record and be the band that we are now.

“We saved our friendship, we never really fell out as people - we just all wanted to do different things in our lives. at the time.”

Busted, Manchester Apollo. Thursday, February 16. Details from 0844 477 7677