World exclusive: Boyzone planning anniversary tour and album

With Westlife about to call it a day, Irish boyband fans can console themselves with the news that Boyzone are planning a new album and anniversary tour in 2013.

“We’re gonna be 20 years together in 2013,” Keith Duffy told Hot Press' Olaf Tyaransen. “We got together in ‘93. So we’re thinking of getting back together at the end of 2012, October, November, and getting a new album together, an anniversary album of some of our favourite songs, some of our old songs and some brand new songs, and maybe do an anniversary tour, and just celebrate the fact that we’re 20 years together.”

Although the band have been lying relatively low following the tragic death of Stephen Gately in Mallorca in 2009, Duffy claims that Boyzone – who split from 2000 to 2007 - will always stay working together.

“We’ll never split up again. We’re not a band that is gonna be busy working 12 months of the year, that’s never gonna happen because we’ve all got families and kids and different interests – mine being the acting. It’s something I never want to close the door on, because I love my time with the band.

“I’d never be in the music business outside of Boyzone. It’s the only part of the music business [that] I’ve ever been in. It’s part of my life, it’s part of my upbringing, all of my memories of life. Everything that happened to me – the birth of my children, my marriage, everything has been while I was in Boyzone. So it’s a part of me life I never wanna close the door on.”

Having had successful stints in Coronation Street and Fair City, Keith Duffy is currently in rehearsals for Druid Theatre’s upcoming production of John B. Keane’s Big Maggie (directed by Garry Hynes), which opens in Galway’s Town Hall Theatre on November 11.

You can read the full interview with him in the next issue of Hot Press, out on November 3.