Strawhouses first came together in 2005, bound by a shared love of alt-rock songwriting with big ambitions. Following singles and EP releases, their debut album These Are The Willing arrived in 2010. Performing shows up and down the country, they built a loyal following through local radio support and picked up BBC 6 Music airplay from Tom Robinson for the track Batteries — the kind of early endorsement that felt like a beginning.

But beginnings don’t always unfold the way you expect. Like a lot of bands who pour everything into music and find the world not quite ready to pour back, Strawhouses stepped back. Paul kept writing and recording — a solo album as Paul Straws, another as Those Fantastic Things — but a collection of songs always meant to be a second Strawhouses record sat quietly, waiting. Fifteen years on, those songs finally have a home. Time in the Light isn’t a comeback in the traditional sense — no grand reinvention, no chasing a moment. It’s something rarer: a record made purely for the love of making it. And it sounds like it. Where the debut hinted at the scale these songs deserved, this one goes all in — string quartet, trumpets, cascading layers of guitar, piano and synth, a kitchen-sink ambition that feels completely earned. Paul (vocals, guitar, piano, keys), Rishi (guitar, piano, glockenspiel, harmonium, string/brass arrangements), Chris (vocals, guitar), Stuart (drums, percussion) and Michael (bass, guitar) honed the arrangements and tracked for over five years, with Grammy award-winner Guy Massey mixing the results. It feels like exactly what it is: a band rediscovering why they started in the first place.