Songfacts®:

• Like many of us, the COVID lockdown was a time of frustration for Biffy Clyro vocalist Simon Neil. Bored and lacking in purpose, he wrote this song as "a slap across the jaw" against his lethargy. "There were moments in the past year when I just wanted to scream my head off," Neil said. "I lacked purpose and didn't want to get out of bed for a while, and the song is a wake-up call to myself. You need to get a fire in your belly and get up and do something, because no-one's going to do it for you. It's like a self-motivating mantra."
• Neil first came across the "Hunger in Your Haunt" phrase a year or so before lockdown. He thought it was a great way to describe maintaining your inner fire in challenging circumstances. "If life's tough, you can find yourself just digging your way down," he told Apple Music. "This song is about shaking off that negativity and finding a reason to get a smile on your face and be there for the people you care about."
• For the first time on a Biffy tune, Neil adopts a talk-singing style. Whenever he'd tried talk-singing previously, Neil felt it was taking away from the melody, but this punchy, hard-riffing track was the right one to do it on.
• Neil had the riff kicking around for a couple of years before finding the right verses and chorus to go with it. One day in lockdown, he sat down and came up with lyrics that fit seamlessly with the music. "I don't know if that happened because of lockdown or whether there was just so little pressure that it was like, 'Actually, this feels good,' he told Kerrang. "It's hard to tell whether it was the restrictions that made me feel like I needed to really crack this song, or whether it was just, '(Adopts hippy voice) Hey man, music's music, we're lucky to be jaaammiing.'"
• Biffy Clyro released the song as the second single off The Myth of the Happily Ever After. They dropped it along with a 10-minute video featuring performances of both "A Hunger In Your Haunt" and lead single "Unknown Male 01."