He formed The Frames one year before The Commitments, going on to record six studio albums including Dance The Devil, For The Birds and Irish chart topper Burn The Maps.
The band had a cult following outside the island but were huge on it, buoyed by radio-friendly singles like Revelate, Pavement Tune and Lay Me Down.
In 2005, he released an album with Marketa Irglova as The Swell Season. Over the course of 16 years, they would record and release three albums, but it was their exploits on film that sent them stratospheric.
Once, the low-budget musical they co-starred in, directed by former Frames bassist John Carney, became a sleeper hit in 2007 with Falling Slowly, its breakout song, winning an Academy Award win for the pair.
The film, made on a shoestring budget of less than £100,000, went on make more than $20m worldwide. Steven Spielberg described it as a having given him “enough inspiration to last the year”.
A Broadway adaptation of the film, featuring Hansard and Irglová’s songs, later won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical.
After 19 years, Hansard’s career had reached a new level of fame, with he and Irglova even making a cameo appearance on The Simpsons.
But he maintained his steady stream of musical releases in the years since, most notably with five solo albums up to 2023’s All That Was East Is West Of Me.
Perhaps his biggest life change came three years ago when he became a father.
He told BBC Radio Ulster in 2023 that it had “in the greatest way possible, upturned everything I know”.
“It’s absolutely incredible, I can’t believe I stood on the other side of this chasm for so long.”
