Ahead of The Overtones Cardiff date next week, Andy Howells chats to singer Mike Crawshaw.

Hot on the heels of the release of their third album ‘Saturday Night at the Movies', The Overtones play St David’s Hall next week. The album found the band reinterpreting iconic songs from famous films such as Grease, Dirty Dancing, Pretty Woman, Cocktail and The Jungle Book with their own timeless sense of style and it’s those tracks among others fans will be able to hear next week.

"We’ve been so lucky that our fans have enjoyed the tours as much as they have,” says Overtone singer, Bristol born, Mike Crawshaw who recalls starting off with the band in small theatres during their formative years, “We’ve built it up to a point we are now in 3000 seat venues. There are always people stood up, dancing in the aisles and it’s brilliant to see.”

“What we’ve done with this tour is strip back the set with the five of us stood there performing banging tunes for two hours. 99 per cent of the tunes are songs people can get up and dance to, forget their troubles, leave their inhibitions at the day and just have a great night a night full of energy, happiness and fun.”

As I chat to Mike it becomes clear that the band enjoy performing classic hits from the 1950s and 60s mixed in with original material for their fans, which helps create an appeal across the generations.

“We’re desirable to a lot of age groups,” he tells me, “we have older fans who remember the hits, and then the younger fans who like me remember hearing their parents play these songs and their kids who are new to these songs.”

“We get frequently told that our younger fans have never heard some of these songs. One of our younger fans approached us and asked “when did you write Why Do Fools fall In Love?” And we said “well this was actually out long before we were even born, were just bringing it back. Even if these songs are 50/60 years old they still have a relevant place in modern music.”

The Overtones appeal is even extending overseas now and the boys hope to be touring worldwide with a fourth album later in 2014, but Mike confirms the band are very grounded and don’t take their success lightly: “We’ve just started talking about the fourth album, which is a great position to be in. exciting times, we are not expecting anything to happen until were out on a plane or in front of a TV camera because things can change so rapidly.”

Incredible to think that way perhaps, especially from a band that have already had so many career highlights including performing at The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee where they met Mike’s idol, Stevie Wonder and more recently performing live to over million people and a televised audience of 20 million at Germany’s Brandenburg games.

“Its m9ind boggling”, says Mike, “we don’t take it lightly I take photos and stills of these TV shows because when I'm old and grey I want toy be able to tell my kids and grandkids this is what I used to do these are the memories I have I'm definitely going to be a cool granddad. We pinch ourselves every day. “

The Overtones play Cardiff’s St David’s hall on February 26, visit stdavidshallcardiff.co.uk for ticket information.