TWELVE years into their career, Irish hearthrobs Westlife show no signs of flagging.

Their 11th album Gravity is out now and tickets are on sale for their Spring tour.

We caught up with the boy-turned-man band members — Nicky Byrne, Kian Egan, Mark Feehily and Shane Filan.

IT'S NOT LONG SINCE YOUR LAST ALBUM CAME OUT AND HERE YOU ARE WITH ANOTHER ONE
Mark: It’s about a year. We went away for a year before the last album, had a year off from Westlife completely. It was great releasing Where We Are and not having to remind everyone who we were. We were definitely ready to make another album though, because we had so much fun last time.

HOW WAS RECORDING THIS TIME?
Mark: We met John Shanks (producer), got on immediately and the album was done — from not having one song written to being finished, inside three months. We just went for it and we think it’s one of the best albums we've ever done. It’s exciting getting the feedback that’s coming in now.

WERE YOU NERVOUS MEETING JOHN SHANKS?
Kian: I think we were nervous, not because we didn’t think it was going to work but because of his success rate and who he has worked with before — Jon Bon Jovi, Take That, Backstreet Boys, Sting, Sheryl Crow, you name them. He's a big producer and has had 45 number ones in America.

YOU RECORDED THE ALBUM BETWEEN LA AND LONDON. IS IT DISTRACTING BEING IN LOS ANGELES?
Shane: No, it's the opposite actually: We get distracted in London. In LA, we go over there and we work. Sure it's nice being there. It's amazing. We're not going home each night like when we're here and we have a finite amount of time there. We try to sack off early and go for a beer in the afternoon and things, but we know we have work to do when we're there.

THERE ARE TWO COVERS ON THE ALBUM. HOW DID YOU CHOOSE THEM?
Shane: It's Simon Cowell's doing. Every year he puts a couple of songs out there and says that we should do versions. After we thought we'd finished the album, we sat down with him and he said [does perfect Cowell impression] 'Guys, trust me, it'll be a big song for you'. We weren't sure at first, but we lived with them, and sure enough he was right. It's more a trust thing with Simon. He has worked with us and picked each of our number one singles, so we want to show that we trust him.

YOU'RE PRETTY WELL KNOWN FOR COVERS NOW
Nicky: Yes we are, and we're not against them if they're good songs, but we won't be doing covers of songs that were released really recently again: We won't be doing covers for the sake of it. Simon was banging on about these songs, so we gave them a go and we realised he was right.

THE SONG WHAT ABOUT NOW FROM YOUR LAST ALBUM IS YOUR BIGGEST AIRPLAY HIT ON THE RADIO. DOES IT SURPRISE YOU THAT THINGS ARE STILL GETTING BIGGER FOR THE BAND?
Kian: It is amazing that after 11 albums we can still do things we haven't done before, or set new records for ourselves. What About Now definitely changed things. It might not have sold millions of copies, but I was on YouTube yesterday and the video has almost two million plays or something. That's not just me watching it either! I think it shows that we can still reach new people and audiences with everything we do.

DO YOU STILL THINK YOU CAN TRY NEW THINGS?
Nicky: Well we're more in a position to do what we want. We were the definition of manufactured and did whatever we were told, but now we're not like that. We have a lot, lot more say in everything now.

Mark: And we're moving toward the sort of music we should be making as well. This new album is a lot closer to where we should be, as was the last album.

Kian: Our first three albums were extremely strong and I think we lost the hits after that, but then we started learning what we needed to do, and figuring out what made us successful.

Shane: You can't be at your best for 12 years solid. We've done 11 albums in that time, and I don't think any are terrible, but when we've been bad it's because we or the record label got lazy. You learn over time that you can't be perfect all the time, but the important thing is your learn from your mistakes — and understand what makes you successful.

* Westlife play the Liverpool Arena on March 18 and the Manchester Arena on March 22 and 23.