AS a quiet teenager secretly writing songs in his bedroom, Dan Smith had no real intention of becoming a global star – but it’s happened anyway and he still can’t get his head around it.

Bastille’s debut Bad Blood was released in March of this year and promptly went to the top of the album charts.

Even then, he didn’t think Bastille’s music would be heard outside the UK, let alone beyond Europe.

As we speak, though, he’s making preparations to go to Japan for the Summer Sonic Festival, and as soon as that’s done, it’s off to Bestival before jetting off to the US for a full tour.

“It’s mad, isn’t it?” says 26-year-old Smith, who’s still struggling to comprehend what’s about to happen.

“Going to play in a country for the first time... It’s one thing to win over a crowd when you’re playing to them, but it’s another to have them on your side before you’ve even turned up."

He’s referring to Pompeii, the fourth single to be released from Bad Blood, and by far the most internationally successful.

“Everywhere we go people know it,”

he says. “It’s so strange to think the song has got there before we have.”

Smith began writing songs in his bedroom when he was either 15 or 16, he can’t quite remember. He says they were “inaccessible, odd and not very good”, and performing was far from his mind. He didn’t even tell his friends he was songwriting; his family only knew because they could hear him through the wall.

“Getting up and performing on stage isn’t at the top of a list of things I like doing, even now,” he says. “It wasn’t until I was at university and my friends were all in bands, and I started going to a lot more gigs, that I thought about it. It was because of a combination of seeing more live music and them gently encouraging me that I started playing live.”

Back then, he was plain old Dan Smith, but a year or so later, in 2010, around the same time he met the three people now in the band, he came up with the Bastille moniker.

“From there it was all about waiting to see what happened, and what has happened is beyond my wildest dreams.

“Our crowds are generally quite vocal and up for it, so we’re lucky, but during Overjoyed in Manchester recently, there were four circles of moshing,” Smith explains.

“It’s a really depressing bit of music if I’m honest, so I never expected that.

“And at another gig, four people were carried out after fainting. Not that our gigs are horrific or dangerous, I should add, but we never thought people would dance ’til they dropped!”

Bastille will have to get used to seeing more of this at Bestival with two shows this weekend.