Taking Back Sunday have transformed from small time Long Island band to one of America's brightest new bands, having played with the likes of The Used, Midtown, Boxcar Racer and Jimmy Eat World. I got the chance to interview guitarist and co-vocalist John Nolan on a rather crackly phone line to New York. Here's what he had to say.

When and how did the band form?

About 4 years ago, Eddie started the band. He'd been in a lot of bands from Long Island so he put out the word that he was starting a new band and that's how I ended up trying out. We went through a lot of different line up changes in the first year and about a year or so into the line-up we settled on what we have now.

What was the best part of 2002 for you?

It was a really great year for us overall and a lot of amazing things happened, I would probably say the response that our record has got has been the best thing. The amount of people who went out and bought the record and responded positively to it, and just that we've developed a good fan base.

Does it annoy you when you get referred to as an "emo" band? Would you prefer not to be labelled?

Yeah, we'd prefer not to be labelled an emo band, but it's kind of unavoidable. We'd prefer not to be labelled at all, I don't think any band wants a label on them, emo especially. But it's going to happen, no matter what, you're going to get labelled.

How would you describe your debut album "Tell all your friends" and do you have a favourite track off it?

I don't know how I'd describe it, we describe our sound as kind of 'melodic hardcore', with some punk rock influence. It's kind of hard, I don't really know what my favourite track would be, I honestly haven't even listened to the album in a very long time, but one of my favourites has always been "Cute without the E". It changes though, and it usually has more to do with how you play the song live because you don't really sit around and listen to the album.

How do you deal with being on tour almost all the time?

We deal with it ok, it gets tiring after a while and we're about at the end of our current tour and it's been really, really great, but we're pretty burnt out. It gets a little bit overwhelming at times but we've been very lucky, all of our tours have been successful. A lot of bands tour as much as we do, play a lot more shows and struggle for a lot longer than we have, and we never have to struggle to get by, by any means, so we've been lucky that way.

Out of all the bands that you've toured with, have you got any favourites?

Yeah, we got to do a short tour with Rival Schools, that was pretty cool. I thought Brand New were great, they're good friends of ours, they're from Long Island too so that was a really great tour. The bands have been great on loads of the tours that we've been on. The Exit are a really good band again, and the Starting Line. There are tons of them, I couldn't name them all, there are so many that we got on well with.

Your video for "Cute Without the E (Cut from the Team)" is "Fight-Club" themed. Why did you chose to do that, is it one of your favourite films?

It's one of my favourite films, it is Adam's (the lead singer) favourite film. We all like the movie but he loves it, he's the one who has the extreme love for that movie, it's definitely his favourite. He had a lot to do with the video being themed around Fight Club.

How was it filming that video?

It was good, it was fun. We only had 2 days to do it so it was a little more rushed than I would have liked it to be but we were happy with it. There were good fights going and we got to work with our friend Christian Winters, who did our first video "Great Romances". He's a friend of ours from way back and it was really cool to get to work with him again.

What are some of your all time favourite bands or artists?

Of all time? How many do I get to pick?!

As many as you want!

OK, well Radiohead are definitely up there, Nirvana would be another one. The Beatles are definitely one of my favourite bands, that kind of goes without saying. Yeah, I think those would be my top 3 bands, all of those are bands who I've listened to over a long time. Some bands I listen to for a month or two then move on, but those three are the bands that have really stuck with me over the years.

Do you have any advice that you'd give to bands who are just starting out?

I would say that the most important thing is that you get in a band full of people that all have the same first priority; being in a band, and that making music is more important to them than anything else. To be with a group of people who all have that same feeling, the same passion about making music and knowing that's what they want to do more than anything. So if you get a group of people who all have that then I think that's more than half the battle there, as it can be hard to find people who are really, really dedicated.

Did you always want to be in a band? If you weren't in Taking Back Sunday, what do you think you'd be doing now?

I haven't always wanted to be in a band but ever since I started playing guitar, I have. I started playing guitar when I was about 15, which seems a little bit late compared to some people I know, but ever since then I've wanted to be in a band and wanted to do that for a living. If I wasn't doing this, I really have no idea what I'd be doing, I don't really do anything else very well and I don't really enjoy anything else!

What have you got planned for the rest of this year?

We're going to the UK at the end of May to do another tour and at the end of June we're going on the Warped Tour for the rest of the Summer, that's about as far as our plans extend at the moment.

Are you looking forward to the Warped Tour?

Yeah, we're not really sure what to expect, we've never been involved with it at all. We've heard a lot of good and bad things about it so we're not really sure what it's going to be like, but we're pretty psyched to be part of something that we've all gone to in the past. It's pretty cool that we're getting to play it and be on the main stage.

Did you ever think you'd get to play on a tour that big?

No, not really. I always thought that if we did ever get to play on the Warped Tour it would be on one of the smaller stages in the afternoon or something. The fact that we're playing on the main stage is pretty unbelievable!

Thanks a lot to John for talking to me and to Victory Records for setting the phone interview up. To learn more about the band, visit www.takingbacksunday.com and look out for them when they're in the UK in May. Their debut album "Tell All Your Friends" is out now!

Originally conducted for www.justwannarock.com