TRYING to please everyone is a thankless task. Just ask Andy Cairns, singer and guitarist with Belfast rockers Therapy? for confirmation of that.

The band are currently on tour, playing places they haven’t played in a long while performing “forgotten” songs from their impressive 16-album back catalogue.

“One of the questions we’re always asked is ‘Why don’t you play this or that song?’,” explains Andy.

“So, we decided we’d do a tour playing stuff off the first two albums from the early 1990s and a few from the later albums up to 2014 or 15.”

A treat for dedicated fans you might think. Andy is now not so sure.

“I’ve had the emails already,” he laughs. “Between the three of us we’ve had everything from ‘Will you play this obscure B-side from 1992?’ to ‘I will be coming to such and such a town and if you don’t play this song, I won’t buy a ticket’.

“Some of the hardcore fans are trying to bully us but we can only play for so long and the tracks will represent the early part of the band’s career. We’ll probably play for an hour and 40 minutes, so there’s not really anything more we can do to please everyone.”

Andy and bandmates – bass player Michael McKeegan and drummer Neil Cooper – will tough it out though. They’re like that.

The frontman continues: “We played in Cork recently and we met these two fans beforehand who said ‘You never play anything off your first album, Babyteeth, and it’s very special to this city’.

“So, we opened with three songs in a row from the first album… to silence and bewilderment from the audience.

“We can’t win but we knew that when we decided to do it.”

But Therapy? have proved to be survivors and, unlike many of their peers, have continued to record and play continuously for over 30 years. There may have been a couple of line-up changes but no breaks.

“We often talk about this and we think it’s because we began by playing all round Ireland,” explains Andy, who grew up in Belfast but has more recently lived in Kingston.

Since about 1988-89, until they released the first single, the self-financed Meat Abstract in 1990, they have toured endlessly in Ireland and went to France a couple of times.

“When we got our first break, we were seasoned musicians, seasoned touring musicians,” says Andy. “Often bands become successful after just four of five months and it brings pressure and they break up, but we had this background of touring.

“We considered ourselves working musicians so if a record isn’t successful, it doesn’t faze us.”

The next challenge for Therapy? is the release of their next album, Hard Cold Fire.

“It’s been recorded for a year and we’re waiting for the right time,” says the frontman. “We don’t want it to get lost in the run-up to Christmas, so we’ll probably put it out in about March.”

He adds that they might even play a few of the new songs on the current tour, which comes to The Casino in Guildford tomorrow night (Saturday 19 November).