Kodaline frontman Steve Garrigan has opened up about his battle with anxiety.
He explained that his anxiety caused him to fake his on-stage persona, before hiding from social interactions after the performance.
Speaking to the Irish Sun, Steve said that his behavior was unhealthy.
He said: “When the band started off, everything was always about the gig.”
“I’d just give it my all on stage and after the show is when I would be like, ‘I’m going to hide in the corner.'”
“I’d try and just talk to who I needed to talk to and then disappear.”
“Which is not a very healthy thing to do but it was just a habit I got into with social anxiety, it was a part of it. But I don’t think it’s ever affected the band in a bad way.”
Steve previously appeared on the Ray D’Arcy Show to raise awareness about anxiety.
“When I was 19 years old I had a massive panic attack. I was walking around town and I didn’t know what was going on, I didn’t even know what anxiety was, I didn’t know what a panic attack was, I just thought I was dying,” he told Ray.
His bandmate Mark Prendergast also revealed he had his own issues with anxiety
He said: “I didn’t know what anxiety was until Steve went through it. And even when he was going through it in the early stages, I had no understanding of it.”
“A lot of people don’t understand it. I went through a very brief stage of anxiety and as soon as it happens to you, you’re like ‘holy, it’s this?'”
“Anxiety is just a word but what you can actually feel and how scared you can be of walking in to a room to talk to somebody, it can be the scariest thing ever.”
