By Asia Palomba, news correspondent

The Script are back after a three year hiatus with their new album, “Freedom Child.” The Irish pop-rock band played at the Orpheum Theater Saturday, making Boston the third stop on their tour. After the US, the band will travel overseas to Europe, Australia and Africa.

The Script performed many of their new singles like “Rain,” but also favorites from past albums like “3” and the self-titled album, “The Script.” The energy was electric as lead singer Danny O’Donoghue bounced around on stage and took turns weaving through the crowd to sing and dance with fans. Lead guitarist Mark Sheehan and drummer Glen Power provided the songs’ sonic backbone that got the crowd out of their seats dancing.

Before the show, The Huntington News had the opportunity to sit down with the three Irish rock stars to talk about their new album, their lives on tour and the best food this country has to offer.

The Huntington News: This is your first time on the scene after three years. What made you come back?
Danny O’Donoghue: We were bored of sitting at home. We took a bit of time off for personal issues as well; I went through vocal surgery. It was mainly we were kinda bored of being at home, and our family members also wanted to kick us back out.

HN: So you were just back in Dublin?
Mark Sheehan: Yeah, we spent a lot of time back in Los Angeles as well. Los Angeles is an old home of ours in a way: it’s where we formed the band, it’s where we lived for a long time. We kind of hopped between Ireland and London and LA.

HN: So your album “Freedom Child” is a bit different from your previous albums. What made you change your sound?
MS: I think as a musician it’s always about evolution, and you’re always chasing something that you haven’t done before. We’ve always produced our own records, we’re literally so hands on. This time around we wanted to use other people and try different things and get a bit more experimental. We wanted to just try to stretch the sound a bit. The lyrics and melodies are still the same, it’s still us telling our stories, but it’s more the sonic quality that we wanted to move on a little bit.

HN: Was it hard for you to have to stretch the sound?
MS: It was hard to use other people because we’re control freaks.
DO: It’s easy to change the sound, it’s just changing different patterns. Instead of using the piano, you can use the keyboard sound, or different types of production techniques. But what’s been great is the reaction. Although it is a bit of a different sound, people have really been reacting great to the record. We kind of stretched to change the sound, but eventually these songs just become part of The Script tapestry anyways.

HN: What would you say was your defining moment as a band?
MS: The first album. We had been unsuccessful for so long. When it finally clicks and happens, you can’t but help but to count your lucky stars on that little moment. From then on it’s about maintaining your career. We’ve been blessed with so many moments after that, from touring with Paul McCartney, U2, Adele and then playing for the Queen of England to the Croke Park in Ireland.
Glen Power: Yeah, 80,000 people in our hometown, that was amazing.
MS: Walking out to major festivals where there are 75,000 people, we’ve just been really blessed from that moment onwards. I think that those defining moments are when you really do look back and you go [expletive], that first album was really big for us, people really payed attention.

HN: How was the reaction back home when you dropped your first album?
DO: Amazing.
MS: It was crazy. They wear us like a badge.
DO: It’s still the same to this day. It was the first time in a long, long time that there had a band that was competing with every other band. Since U2, there hasn’t been a band that’s been out there and been able to kinda challenge all the other bigger bands for radio slots and for touring spots. They were just stoked to have another band because considering how much music means to Ireland as a whole, they go crazy for it.

HN: What was the most challenging moment in your careers?
DO: Just being away from family. Everything about this industry is amazing, except for the challenging part where you have to be away from your family. You get to do the most amazing things in the world but a lot of times…
GP: …there’s a price.

HN: How do you mediate that?
Danny: Just look at the bank balance at the end of the year. As a musician, don’t get me wrong, we love playing music, we love the fact that our songs are our legacy, but at the end of the day you are doing this for a reason: to put a roof over your head and clothes on your kids’ backs. There’s no better reason than that.

HN: Do you have any plans for another album after “Freedom Child”?
MS: I think there’s always plans; we never stop writing songs. We’ll always keep that moving forward and keep releasing music, that’s always the goal. As long as there are ears there to listen to us, we’ll constantly write and play.

HN: Do you guys have a favorite place in the world that you’ve toured?
DO: I do love coming to America, touring the States, particularly because I love the [expletive] diner food. There’s loads of [expletive] diners. Diners and Shake Shack, and I’ve had both in the past 24 hours, so I’m a happy man.
GP: I was just introduced to Shake Shack a few weeks ago by Danny.
DO: And they’ve been dating ever since.

HN: Besides the food, what else is tour life like?
MS: No it’s amazing, particularly in America because you are on the road for quite a long time over here because it is just one sort of giant big area. You spend a lot of time just living on the bus, you get into a better routine because you can gig out at nighttime, you can get yourself into a proper routine, where in Europe you are jumping countries everyday. We kind of look forward to when we get here because you can kind of chill the [expletive] out a little bit.

HN: So, since we are a student newspaper, what is your advice to those music and production majors that want to become who you are?
MS: Obviously the one thing that we’d always say is practice till your fingers bleed. But nothing prepares you for shows, doing shows in front of people.
GP: And the only way to get used to the nerves is to keep doing it because you’re going to be nervous.

HN: Are you still nervous sometimes?
GP: Oh, all the time. It’s not as terrifying as it once was. We still get nervous, but it’s less fear and more just nervous tension. We just learned how to deal with that, but when you’re starting out, you don’t know what that’s going to be like, so the first few times you do it is a bit terrifying. You just have to keep doing it.
MS: Also, the one thing that I would say is don’t try to please everybody, because you can never make everyone else happy. Make yourself happy and try to gauge the response you’re getting from local audiences, and if you’re doing something that’s unique, just zero in on that. You got to play to the people who love you, not to the people that dislike you. Play to the people who love it, not to the people who hate it because you’ll drive yourself [expletive] crazy.

HN: I just had a question about one of the songs in your newest album, “Divided States of America.” Was that influenced by the recent presidential election at all?
MS: Well, in a way, I think for us, we had been through Brexit; we had been dealing with the Syrian crisis. France started to go through major divisive issues, and America seemed to be the last frontier. I guess the downfall for us is that we’re such American fans: fan of American food, American music, American people, our band was formed in America. We’re very, very America-driven, and I guess what we’re most proud of America is that you guys are called the United States, and the fact that you guys stay united all the time. This is the first time that we noticed a real clear divide, and we’re not on the red or blue side, we’re not a political band, but when politics does step and it does divide people, that’s when it kind of annoys us. We can say it’s about Trump, we can say it’s not about Trump, but at the end of the day, it’s happening under his presidency and its not looking good to the rest of the world. I don’t know if you noticed in the song, but we say “divided States of America, divided states of the world.” We literally are painting the world out as being, “This is what’s happening everywhere, it’s not just happening in your country, it’s happening absolutely everywhere.” We just thought it was a cool play on words that this was the United States. We just feel it’s very much divided right now.