Songfacts®:

• This is a track from Wildness, Snow Patrol's follow-up to 2011's Fallen Empires. The record was made with Garret "Jacknife" Lee - Snow Patrol's producer since 2003. Released on May 25, 2018, its delay was in part because the band's singer Gary Lightbody had a bout of writer's block. The breakthrough came when one day in the studio, Lightbody was trying to write a song and Lee put on Nick Cave's "Jesus Alone," an anguished prayer to a dead child from a grieving father. Lightbody told The Sun:
  
  "It set me into a trance and that's where A Youth Written In Fire came from. It was the song that allowed me to find my way into the album."
• Gary Lightbody had had an alcohol problem from Snow Patrol's early days. However, after their tour for Fallen Empires finished in late 2012, he started drinking with a gusto. By around 2015/2016 he was drinking daily out of compulsion and hating himself for his alcohol habit. Lightbody finally had a wake-up call when he fell ill, forcing him to miss out on a planned trip to watch the 2016 European football Championship. The medical professionals treating him told him to stop the drinking, which he heeded. He told The Sun this song is about "the alcohol- fuelled days and the more sedate days of now."