23 years ago, Steven Wilson had an idea to fabricate a legendary rock band. Together with Malcolm Stocks, he created an entirely fictional line-up, discography and history and just for fun, a few hours of music to back it up. But then a few years later he looked at the project again and decided there was some merit in the idea. Porcupine Tree became a reality.

Recently, Steven Wilson had a chat with FasterLouder about their touring schedule, what inspires them in their writings and whether any further collaborations are on the horizon.

You are just about to finish up a tour in Europe – how has it been?
It has been very good. Very tiring and quite intense! We did something like 52 shows in the last 10 weeks. But we can’t complain it has been a terrific experience.

There have been plenty of sold out shows both in Europe and in the US. How does that make you feel, to know that you are still such an influence on so many people around the world?
I think it is the history of the band really; we have had a good following internationally almost from the beginning without ever reaching the mainstream in any country. It’s funny you know because sometimes we go and we tour a particular country and we see a mainstream band and they are playing huge places, where as we are playing to one and half to two thousand people, but then we will go to the next country and that band won’t have any standing at all in that country where as we are playing the same size venue.

So I think on balance I would have to say that I am happy that that is the way it has turned out. It is nice to be able to travel and to tour the world as a musician. It is great to have a following internationally and it’s great to have that.

Where in the world have you not visited as yet, but you would love to tour in?
We are heading to India for the first time next weekend. We are doing a show in Mumbai and I am really looking forward to that. It is one of those things where I have always relied on my job to take me to places that I have wanted to go, so for example coming to Australia last year was a fantastic experience. I had never been and always wanted to go and it was a great opportunity to go and meet the fans and see the country at the same time. That was wonderful. I still haven’t been to South America either, but I think we are heading there for the first time next Spring.

PT’s albums have always taken the listener on a musical journey, what is the concept behind The Incident?
The idea behind The Incident was first and foremost to create it the way a writer would create a novel, so rather than just writing a bunch of songs and putting them together, the idea was actually to start at the beginning and allow the piece of music to develop over a longer period of time and actually allow each piece of the idea to grow very naturally out of the proceedings. Which is a very literary way to approach something.

When you are writing a novel you sit down and you start at the beginning and you allow the plot and the characters to develop over the period of the book. So to approach a piece of music in the same way was really the basic idea. I wasn’t really focused on lyrics in the beginning either, I was more focused on the music and allowing the music to grow and develop and not to feel like it was fragmented and stuck together. Rather I wanted the music to feel like it was constantly and organically moving and growing.

Have your influences and inspirations changed since you first set out to make PT a reality?
Definitely. I think that influences are something that is more important to you when you are first starting out. I think that when you are a kid and you are first starting out you tend to wear your influences on your sleeve, which is fair enough – but for me, more important influences now are something like what’s going on in my life or cinema. Those are my influences. But still in my musical DNA it will still be the music I grew up with, whether I am still listening to the music or not.

When you are writing; is it a collaborative effort or are you the main ideas man?
You know, I find it very hard to write by committee. I am not sure that writing is something that you can do by committee, although some bands do it and I am not quite sure how they do it. You know sometimes we go into a studio and improvise and out of that will come some mutual ideas that we then take away and work on, on our own. But for the most part I find creating music is a solitary thing, it is a kind of personal vision. It is hearing something inside your head and trying to get it out into the real world. And the only person who knows what it sounds like inside your head is you.

I find that much like writing a book; you wouldn’t have someone write it by committee! You would have four people writing the same novel. I feel that music is very similar to writing literature. So for me, it does tend to fall on me to come up with the creative process in the writing and to present them to the band and say, I’ve written these songs, so now let’s kind of arrange them and make them better.”

There are so many talented bands emerging at the moment, is there any one in particular that you would love to collaborate with?
Gosh, there are so many! Sometimes you think that the bands you like the best are the bands that you would never consider working with because they sound perfect already. But sometimes I hear bands that are not necessarily my favourite bands but they are bands that I could put myself into the situation and help them to make their record.

There are many musicians that I would love to collaborate with and to just talk about music. I am a big Trent Reznor fan for example. When I think what Nine Inch Nails and Trent are doing right now, it is really interesting, because he has kind of removed himself from the mainstream industry. He’s making records and giving them direct to fans and I think that is a model for the future. He is also making very eclectic records – last year he made one that is entirely instrumental and that is the kind of ambitious maverick musician that really inspires me at the moment.

So other than Trent and Nine Inch Nails, do you ever look to the newer bands for inspiration in your writing?
Totally. I am always influence and always absorbing everything that is going on around me. There is a terrific English band called Oceansize, and I love the Mars Volta. You have a band that really reminds me of The Mars Volta in Karnivool. I really like their new record, I think it is great. As you said there are a lot of bands around at the moment that are really ambitious and that is great inspiration.

Porcupine Tree play these shows this week, proudly presented by FasterLouder.

Friday 5 February – The Tivoli, Brisbane
Saturday 6 February – Enmore Theatre, Sydney
Sunday 7 February – Palace Theatre, Melbourne