Lawson's Andy Brown on sickness, stardom and the new single 'Roads'

Lawson looked like being a boy band to rival One Direction. Then lead singer Andy Brown, who had already had a brain tumour, suffered liver failure

Andy Brown (Charlie Forgham-Bailey)

In early 2014, Lawson singer Andy Brown was on a night out with friends in his native Liverpool. Brown, then 26, has never been much of a drinker, but he had been at the football earlier, and felt in a celebratory mood having just finished writing his band's second album, the follow-up to 2012's platinum-selling debut, Chapman Square. They were to fly to Nashville imminently to record it.

He awoke the morning after with no recollection of the night before, the hangover heavier than any of its predecessors. It did not recede. Over the next few days, he found he couldn't eat, could barely get out of bed. He was rapidly losing weight; his skin developed a pallid yellow hue. Two weeks later, he was in hospital with liver failure and facing a transplant. He was told that not all patients survive the procedure.

"The head of my record label then called me up, all concerned, like," Brown says, in his broad Scouse accent. "That's when I knew things were serious." The recording of their album was promptly shelved, and Brown was admitted to hospital from which his family, his bandmates, and the head of the record label hoped he would, at some point, re-emerge, alive and well.

Lawson were a bright, bushy-tailed pop quartet comprising Brown on vocals, Ryan Fletcher on bass, Joel Peat on guitar and Adam Pitts on drums. Their debut album generated six top 20 singles. Close in age to One Direction, they were as skilful at styling their hair as they were at producing pop songs with swollen choruses. They were also sufficiently pretty enough to be conveyor-belted across the promotional trail afforded any outfit that manages to generate a global teen fanbase.

"Number one singles in the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore," as Brown points out. They were greeted by screaming girls wherever they went, some of whom got to pose questions to the band on music TV shows. Questions like: "If somebody gave you an elephant, where would you hide it?" Brown winces. "Imagine if Radiohead got asked that," he laughs, adding, before anybody else can: "Not that I'm comparing us to Radiohead."

Brown, now 28, is tall and long-limbed, a runner bean with a quiff, with the boundless enthusiasm of a puppy. He puts as much effort into a handshake as a boxer does his right hook, and it's clear that he takes his music very seriously indeed. "Oh, we want to be taken completely seriously, because we're a credible band," he says, pointing out that their new single, "Roads", is currently getting radio play on XFM and alternative radio in the US. "Sometimes I wonder whether those early pop TV moments will come back and bite us, whether people just see us as a boy band. But we've moved on. We're proper songwriters, musicians. Just come and see us live; listen to the new record," he adds.

Lawson's second album, whose title is still a secret, was recorded in Nashville in a studio recently vacated by Kings of Leon. It is full of widescreen melodies reminiscent of The Script and One Republic, and oozes a motivational sense of optimism, which is surprising given what Brown has so recently endured. If anything, his new music should sound as defiantly bleak as The National, or Nick Cave.

"Ha!" he responds. "I love all that kind of stuff, but I can't help writing music that sounds triumphant, that has an uplift to it. Always have done, mate."

Lawson, originally called The Grove, met at the Academy of Contemporary Music in Guildford. They renamed themselves Lawson in honour of the surgeon who saved Brown's life, because liver failure was not his first brush with death. At 19, while studying computer science at university, he had a brain tumour.

"It wasn't malignant, but it was growing," he says. "They had to cut it out, which lost me my hearing in my right ear." For a musician, this was devastating. "I can't hear anything in stereo, just mono. But it's fine, you get used to it. The left over-compensates."

He would have lost his sight had Dr Lawson not operated, and there was also a 40 per cent chance he would be left with facial paralysis. Recounting this now, he speaks in the carefree manner of someone relating a pleasant Sunday afternoon picnic. "Acoustic neuroma," he says. "I was a 19-year-old trying to break into the music industry, so facial paralysis wasn't a great prospect. But Dr Lawson did an amazing job."

Being struck down with one serious illness before your 30th birthday is unlucky, two might seem careless. Brown's doctors still have no clear idea why his liver failed quite so catastrophically last year. It might have been an allergic reaction to something or, more likely, given the strength of the hangover he had, someone could have spiked his drink.

"And that's happened to me before," he says. "Couple of years ago, in London." I ask him for details. "Don't know how it happened, really, or why. I guess I might be a target, if anyone recognises me. I've looked into this, and it happens a lot, spiking drinks. More than you'd think."

While undergoing treatment for his liver failure – which never went public – the band continued to fulfil outstanding duties. His doctors ordered him to cancel the show in Beirut that, but he refused because, "we'd already sold 5,000 tickets." He was prescribed a course of steroids, to which his body responded favourably, and which took him off the transplant waiting list. But it was a slow process, too slow for Brown. It doesn't pay for pop acts to dawdle, and so Lawson flew to the US in late 2014 to record their already much-delayed second album, where the singer pretended the side-effects to the steroids were manageable.

"There was a lot of chemical imbalance going on, a lot of acid reflux," he says. He spent evenings there gorging on ribs and burgers in an effort to put weight back on. "As you can see," he says, referencing his whippet-thin frame, "that's still a work in progress."

Months on, and Brown is mostly better now, a cautious teetotaller who will never accept a drink, of any description, from a stranger again. Otherwise, he seems curiously unscarred by the experience. If somebody did spike his drink, he is presumably still furious, no?

He considers the question a while, fingers tapping chin. "Not really. I'm not a spiteful person, I don't have anger, I don't have depression. If anything, I just feel extremely lucky." He smiles widely, and it's a smile filled with warmth and compassion. "I mean, it could have been much worse, couldn't it?"

Lawson's single 'Roads' is released on 24 May; their second album follows in the summer. They play The Great Escape on 16 May