WEXFORD four-piece Corner Boy have given up on music’s well-trodden trails. That’s not a bad thing: with the long-awaited release of their third EP around the corner, the imaginative folk act have settled on slow-dripping their music, and making the most out of the opportunities that it throws up. Instead of recording records or seeking deals, they’ve traveled the world in the back of a transit van.

That’s involved shows in North America, South Korea and the Middle East, a show at half time in the All Ireland final, and a trad sit-ins in Paris. “It’s been about getting out there and getting involved for us,” frontman Mick D’Arcy explains. “We’ve been incredibly fortunate with opportunities.”

“Even in the first year after we formed, we played the Late Late Show and half time at Croke Park to 80,000 people. All these things you’d expect more established bands to do after a few years. People just took to us straight away.”

“If you look back at our early music, though, it’s very obvious where our influences were. We decided we’d take some time off about three years ago, and we went out into the world, took whatever opportunities that came our way. It was about travel, meeting people, new cultures, and using that to inform our music.”

“All of that travel is the experience that has influenced our sound now. We’re incredibly happy. We have, I’d estimate, a 30-40 song backlog. We have a lot of material to release.”

There’s also a cyclical nature to the new EP ‘Goodbye Old Holy’, in that it returns to the scene of one of Corner Boy’s early successes. The band won the Red Bull Bedroom Jam in 2013, just as they started out. The contest that had a prize of recording in the famous Grouse Lodge Studios in Westmeath. They loved the place, and returned again for this record, with Dropkick Murphy’s producer Ted Hutt on the sound decks.