Mawazine 2015: Placebo’s Brian Molko on the band’s upcoming 20th anniversary tour

Brian Molko of the British bank Placebo. Fadel Senna / AFP photo

Speaking exclusively to The National before their blistering performance in Morocco's Mawazine Festival on Tuesday, Placebo frontman Brian Molko says next year will be a big one for the rockers with a greatest hits tour celebrating their 20th anniversary.

Happy upcoming 20th anniversary. You guys have spent the year so far performing in festivals. How has the experience been?

We are really enjoying ourselves at the moment. Over the last couple of years we have become a better band essentially and we are really enjoying performing. We finally learned how to truly connect with an audience which is really important, otherwise things are very flat.

Earlier this year Placebo made their discography available for streaming on Spotify. What took you so long?

We were very dubious about streaming and I do think there is still a lot of work to be done when it comes to how much artists get paid. I think it is very difficult for new bands to make a living because of streaming so there is still a lot work to be done. So the streaming for us is an experiment. We resisted for a long time but we felt it is not our position to dictate to people how they want to consume our music, but I am still of the opinion that artists need to be remunerated better for their streams.

Reflecting upon Placebo's last album, 2013's Loud Like Love, are you satisfied with the way it holds up today?

The way that I wrote in the past used to be very confessional and now I have changed. Now what I do is I tell stories and paradoxically, by telling stories with characters, you can be more vulnerable and open because you are less self conscious. That really comes in to play in Loud Like Love and it made me a better song writer.

What’s next for Placebo?

We have already started writing the new album. Next year we are doing a greatest hits tour and it is highly likely that we will play songs that we haven’t played in a long time. We are a strange band in that we don’t like our commercially successful material so we don’t play it live, but this time around next year we will try to make the fans happy by playing our most popular material - maybe for the last time.

Any chance that tour may stop in the UAE?

There is no plans to play there at the moment.

• The Mawazine Festival ends on Saturday