I grew up in a very religious family in Bangor, Northern Ireland, steeped in Protestant Baptist dogma. There's always a side of you which resists that. My brother and I were definitely exploring outside the neatly marked-out lines you are not supposed to step over when you're in that sort of tight-knit religious community. The first single I bought was Milk and Alcohol by Dr Feelgood when I was five years old. I'd make these forays to a local record shop and come home and play them on the sly.

I got myself into some proper bother at about the age of 13 by just being a kind of idiot delinquent muppet on the street.

Friends and I were sneaking out in the middle of the night, stealing and doing all sorts of nonsense. One night we got caught because we nicked a moped and were trying to hotwire it. There was one particular policeman who really wanted to see two of us go down, so we were kind of hauled over the coals for an entire summer holiday. I had a taste of horrible depression at that point and the only thing that pulled me through was picking up the guitar and playing it.

There wasn't any other kind of release.

Glasgow was a massive escape. I was at university in Belfast and at the end of that you're kind of looking at a void.

For me there was nothing else I was going to do other than make music. We weren't for sticking around and getting day jobs. Why not chip off somewhere else and see what's happening? We moved in October and spent a winter in Glasgow, learnt a few lessons. It was a brutal winter.

I made two albums and went on tour with my now wife Miriam in her VW, touring the UK with John Martyn, Nils Lofgren and a bunch of other people. That was an amazing period but there was something more that I wanted out of music and I was very aware of ruts and how easy it is to fall into them. I started to get an inkling that there are limitations with this music. So I pretty much took a sledgehammer to where I was and left myself with a clear space.

I moved to London. A couple of friends of mine were working in a homeless project and it seemed to me that I'd been doing this self-serving music game for a while.

Maybe it was time I gave something back. Music can always help people but you never see the result, so it was a great thing to get involved in that work where you see you're having hopefully some positive influence on people's lives.

Snow Patrol asked me to come and play guitar for a while and it became abundantly clear very quickly that we were on the same page and got on amazingly well. But I work well on my own. Being a solo artist you have great freedom but also you have sole responsibility. So if anything goes wrong you can't turn round and look at the drummer.

Iain Archer's new single, When It Kicks In, is out on PIAS/ Wall of Sound on Monday. His album Magnetic North is released on September 18.