Songfacts®:

• Colin Macleod grew up on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland. After having a go at music with his project The Boy Who Trapped The Sun, he returned to the area where he resumed life as a farmer and worked on songs. When he returned with Bloodlines, his first album under his own name, his music was mostly about the island and his journey.
  
  "'Kicks In' is about growing up on the island," he said in a Songfacts track by track. "Loosely it's based around the things we used to get up to when we were young, kicking around on the moor, lighting fires, whatever."
• The push-and-pull of a homeland is the theme in this song. Macleod explained: "The character in the story has got one eye on the future and he's thinking about when he has to leave the island. When we were growing up the ultimate goal was when you turned 18 you leave, go away and never come back - that's what lots of my friends did. Within the context of the song the character doesn't want to go, he wants to stay and he's worried about what that means for his life. Will he ever grow up? Will he ever get out of the way he is? But then he learns that he doesn't want to get out of the way he is, he wants to stay like that.
  
  It's quite a personal song. It's the most personal on the album probably. When I was in school I was one of the few people that stayed behind and decided to make my home there, so it's based around that."