Irish girl band B*witched have denied that they broke up because of tensions between the four members.
After scoring no less than four hit singles in a row in the late nineties with C'est la Vie, Rollercoaster, To You I Belong and Blame It on the Weatherman, and selling nearly seven million albums, the fourpiece of twin sisters Edele and Keavy Lynch, 43, Lindsay Armaou, 44, and Sinéad O'Carroll (49) finally called it a day in 2002.
They reformed in 2012 on the ITV pop reality TV show The Big Reunion and have been playing gigs on and off ever since - all while raising young families and perusing non-music careers.
Last year they toured with British boy band Blue and last week they released new single Birthday, 25 years after their debut hit, C'est la Vie.
Looking back on their career as pop Celtic colleens in the late nineties and early noughties, Edele told RTÉ Entertainment. "There was no falling out in the band, there genuinely wasn't. After the band, Sinéad and I called it a falling out, but it was more like we needed to take the space and get to know ourselves without each other.
"I know on The Big Reunion series it always looked like Lindsay and I hated each other but that was about the only three minutes we ever fell out in our life!"
The Big Reunion saw B*witched and other nineties pop acts like Liberty X, Five, Honeyz and Atomic Kitten reforming in front of the cameras but Lindsay says there may have been some creative editing to give the series a more dramatic edge.
"I think what happened on that show was that we genuinely decided to have the conversation in front of the cameras," she says.
"I think with a lot of the other acts who took part had their conversations before the cameras were there but with us, it organically happened and of course they edited it down to a minute even though we were there for hours."
The band’s first spin on the pop merry-go-round came to an end over twenty years ago with a bombshell phone call from their management team telling them they had been dropped.
Sinéad decided to leave and four years later, the Lynch sisters, who are younger siblings of Boyzone member Shane Lynch, formed a new group called Ms. Lynch, which frequently performed B*Witched material at concerts.
But since 2012, the four girls have been touring and find it surreal to look back on their early, and very swift rise to stardom.
"It’s really weird - 25 years! People tell us that it makes them feel so old and I say, `Yup, how do you think that makes us feel?’" says Edele. "Then I tell them that for our first record we were only nine years of age.
"I don’t think it’s as far away as it was because C’est Le Vie is still hanging around. It's still on the dancefloors, it’s still on the radio . . . "
Those salad days of the Shawshank chic of double denim, fiddles and killer pop hooks in the nineties were a lot of fun but the band now admit it was also hard work and burn-out was never far away.
"There was one day when we were doing Top of The Pops and we were all sick, absolutely wrecked," says Sinéad. "But at the beginning of our career, we were full of energy and so excited and enthusiastic. C’est Le Vie went to No 1. it was a success story and what we wanted . . . "
"It was so busy, it was crazy," says Edele. "We used to work 16, 17-hour days easily, every day."
"When C’est Le Vie went to No 1, all the other territories wanted us as well," says Lindsay. "That’s when all the travelling to Europe, to Australia and the states started and that’s when it got intensely busy.
"Missing home and family was the worst part of it all," she adds. "It was a long time on the road. It was living out of a suitcase for years at a time.
"There was no downtime and at a young age as well. To connect with your family would have been quite important but we didn’t really get the time back then."
"Just a little normality, a chance to do normal things. It was all so intense. It was all or nothing."
When we meet, the band are more 3witched than B*witched as Edele’s twin sister Keavy is home in England looking after her sick kids. Things are a whole lot calmer in the B*witched pop coven these days. Gesturing at her phone on the table, Edele says, "Now we have social media. It's all at the flick of your phone."
They also insist that they weren’t party animals back in the day.
"We never actually partied because we were so busy," says Sinéad. "I saw an interview with Niall Horan, and he said he would have loved to have gone to college. Not necessarily to learn stuff but just to have the crack and experience college life."
"We didn’t have time to party, not if we wanted to be awake the next day," Lindsay says. "Because we loved the job so much, we didn’t want to jeopardise it. If we party tonight and we’ve got to be up at six, tomorrow’s a write-off. We were just so sensible!"
"Our management would have probably liked us to be off the wall." laughs Edele.
Speaking about their new song, the righteous kiss-off of Birthday, which comes with a video that appears to have been shot in a high-rise carpark, Edele says, "It’s a song about being in a bad relationship and once you’re out of it you think it’s your birthday. You're moving on. It's about empowerment. If things get you down, find something else."
After they fell apart in 2002, Lindsay went into acting and has starred in the dramas The Smoke and Stay Close.
"It’s another passion of mine," she says. "And I think having been in the music industry for so long I was keen to discover was there something else I enjoyed doing so I went and studied acting for a few years."
Keavy, who has twins Felix and Elàna.[12], went to college and opened her own counselling service in London.
They are all mothers now and, yes, it is hard to balance raising a family with being pop stars. "That’s the job, really," says Sinéad, who has 12- and 14-year-olds at home. "The job is the logistics and the kids and making sure everyone is looked after."
Lindsay's kids are five and three, while Edele, who receives two missed calls from her daughters as we speak, has 11, 12 and a 15-year-olds, named Harley, Enya and Ceol.
Before I leave, I must ask the question that all pop bands need to be asked - did B*witched make any money? "Yes," Edele answers coolly. "Me and Sinead stayed in Ireland and invested in property and then lost it all.
"It was quite frustrating. Because we were watching the other two in England and they're doing grand and we’re thinking, we’ve invested in the wrong country!"
Well, you know what they say, c’est le vie!
Alan Corr @CorrAlan2
Birthday is out now and B*Witched play the Kaleidoscope Festival, 30 June to 2 July at Russborough House, Blessington, Co Wicklow and The 2 Johnnies: Pints in a Field at Musgrave Park, Cork on 24 June.
