Songfacts®:

• This was released as the second single from the Welsh Post-Hardcore band Funeral for a Friend's sixth album Conduit. The song tells of a particular tour test that the band had to endure in their earlier days. Vocalist Matthew Davies-Kreye explained: "'The Distance' is a song about being in a van, on tour traveling around in foreign countries during the summer and going crazy because the van only had one small window that would open and no air con."
• Bassist Richard Boucher told Alternative Press magazine: "This was one of those tracks that just seemed to instantly work when we tried it in rehearsal. Once we heard Matt's vocals, it became quite clear that this needed to be a single. It has a strong stoner influence with a modern twist. It's simple and upbeat, and was fun to record."
• Speaking with Noisecreep, vocalist Matthew Davies-Kreye said when he sits down to write lyrics, "a lot of it is train of though, with a laptop or a piece of paper and I jot things down and a theme develops." However, the only thing that came to mind when he first heard guitarist Kris Coombs-Roberts' music demo for this song, "was a tour we spent across mainland Europe."
  
  He explained: "We were invited to open for Linkin Park, which was weird as it is. We were in this van with no air conditioning and three seats facing each other, with a table in the middle. You just sit there. No fu--ng air conditioning, driving around in solid mainland Europe, where unlike in the U.K., they get the summer. The only way to get air into this van was with a tiny, and I mean no bigger than my hand, slit in the window that you can open and close. We spent the tour like this. I saw intimate details in my guys in the band than I ever cared to share or thought I would share. When listening to this song, I put down lyrical content about that spectacle, of five dudes, in the back of a van, in our underwear, scratching our asses off, on this tour. I am not sure why I thought that would make a good song or a good lyric.
  
  
  It's not meant to transport you to a van with five sweaty dudes in their underwear," he continued, "but it's close. I wanted to capture that feeling; the video suggests what it's like, and pays homage to the nomadic, forced to band together nature of what we do. You have to be a unit, no matter what, in your undies or freezing cold with no heat or if someone is drunk and throwing up all over the place or someone has farted. It's meant to capture that in a beautiful and respectful way, not a bitching way.