Songfacts®:

• Jack Savoretti explained the song's meaning to The Sun: "Most songs I hear on the radio are about how we fell in love or how we broke up. I'm far more interested in what happens during a relationship. This song leads the rest of the album into the realization that what we have now is so much better, than anything we've had before."
• This was released as the lead single from Sleep No More. It actually was a track that Savoretti penned wrote at the end of recording his previous album, Written In Scars. He told HMV.com: "It almost made it on there, but I didn't feel like it had all that much to do with the other songs that were on there, so I kept it aside and it became the pillar of this record."
• Savoretti explained why Sleep No More revolves around this song. "'When We Were Lovers' is quite a melancholy track, it's looking back at something, how carefree you once were, so I thought that was setting things up for quite a sad record, but in fact it was the opposite, it made me appreciate how much better my life is now and how excited I am about where I'm going, so the album became a celebration. Most songs are either about falling in love or breaking up, I wanted to write an album about what happens in the middle."