Olly Alexander has confirmed that Mikey Goldsworthy is staying in Years & Years as a touring member of the band.

The pop trio - which originally formed in 2010 – became a solo project for Olly when, in March, it was announced that founding members Mikey and Emre Turkmen would be departing the electropop group.

Olly, 30, has now revealed that only Emre has left the band full-time, as bassist and keyboard player Mikey will continue to tour with him.

He said: “I love Mikey and Emre, we met over 10 years ago when we started Years & Years. Honestly, the truth is we just changed in that time, people change, we grew apart in the way that we make music. The pandemic just made us have a totally honest conversation about where we were at and this made the most sense, it’s definitely different. Mikey is still going to come on the road with us, he’ll still get some perks.”

Olly also revealed he scrapped an entire album’s worth of songs for his third LP after deciding in lockdown that he wanted to make a record packed with up-tempo dance tunes.

He said: “I started working on new Years & Years music straight after we released the second album back the end of 2018 and in 2019. 'It’s A Sin' started filming towards the end of 2019. Then last year, 2020, I scrapped all of the music I had been working on and started again because I wasn’t happy with it and I just listened wanted to listen to upbeat dance music so I was like, ‘OK, that’s what I want to make now.’ In my head it’s quite difficult to remember everything.”

After receiving rave reviews for his performance in Russell T. Davies TV drama It’s A Sin – which was set during the 1980s AIDS epidemic – Olly is very keen to continue acting and is dreaming of a role in in racy Netflix period drama 'Bridgerton'.

He said: “Oh my gosh, I could be in 'Bridgerton' Season 3, I could be a gay, something.”