MULTI- award winners Show of Hands have never been afraid of trying something new.

But even by their standards, their Sanctuary tour, which comes to Blackburn Cathedral next Thursday promises to be something completely different.

For the trio – Steve Knightley, Phil Beer and Miranda Sykes - will be performing in some of the country’s most historic buildings, ones not known for hosting an intimate gig.

“We did a tour back in 2009 and at that point a lot of cathedrals had not booked live music before whereas a few more are doing it now,” said Steve.

“We try and light the space as well as provide the sound. We want to make people feel as though they are coming to an event.”

Performing in a cathedral can present specific challenges.

“The real challenge is delivering sound,” said Steve. “We have satellite speakers halfway down which are delayed by milliseconds so there is a consistent sound source and we try to minimise the thrashy, bashy shouty songs and make it more reflective and more lyrical.

“It would be very difficult if you have a drummer as cathedrals are these amazing spaces where sound is designed to reverberate.”

Having played everywhere from small folk clubs, major festival stages and even a sold out Royal Albert Hall, Show of Hands are no strangers to different venues and Steve believes that cathedral audiences react to their surroundings.

“The audience tends to recognise its own collective identity in a cathedral,” said Steve, “particularly when they start to sing along together. In some theatres, you can only hear the people around you so you never get that collective sense of a crowd.”

Being in such an impressive space, does Steve succumb to his inner preacher?

“There’s always a temptation, but it’s better to minimise how much you speak as you can lose pronunciation in a cathedral,” said Steve. “So we try for briefer, wittier comments and then crack on with the music. You are relying on the detail rather than the big gesture and we’ll often rearrange songs and slow them down and make them more reflective.”

The band is putting together a special setlist for the Sanctuary tour including some songs from Centenary, an album which took words and music from the Great War.

“It’s nice when you can give songs more a sense of place,” said Steve.

The Sanctuary tour will take up much of the year but Steve is already looking ahead to 2018.

“We’re working on series of collaborations called Joint Venture,” he said. “I worked with a band called the Dohl Foundation, a bhangra band and on the strength of that we decided we would approach bands with their own.

“The idea is to do two versions of a song – one for their own use and one for our use.”

Already artists as diverse as Edward II and Willie and the Bandits have come on boards.

“We’ll be co-writing so it will be rather different to the traditional Show of Hands sound and I’m going to approach some other people and see if they have anything lying around we can knock together and use.”

The Joint Venture album will hopefully be released next autumn with a tour to follow.

And Steve is also heading out next year on a solo tour.

“It’s called No Secrets and it will be a combination of songs and stories,” he said. “I will play songs that were influences on me from Jethro Tull to David Bowie and talk about what I was doing at the time when I heard them, almost like an evening with me, so there’s lots to crack on with.”

Show of Hands with support Kirsty Merryn, Blackburn Cathedral, Thursday, November 2. Details from 0844 847 1664 or www.kinggeorgeshall.com