Having shifted over 40million albums in just 13 years, O'Riordan claims that the pressures of churning out hit records had started to get to her and she was beginning to feel like a product.

The Cranberries then decided a break was needed and its members went off to find themselves or whatever it is millionaire rockstars do on their downtime.

Upping sticks to the wilds of Ontario proved a meditative experience for the Cranberries mouthpiece, time which O'Riordan spent painting, volunteering at a local school, and as she puts it, 'becoming human' again.

Walking away from music for good, however, ultimately proved not to be an option. The pull back into the spotlight proved too strong and Dolores set about carving a solo career. Her debut album 'Are You Listening?' followed in 2007.

Now in 2009 O'Riordan is back again to promote her second solo record, 'No Baggage', due for release in August.

And as much as she wants to talk about how great her new album is there is still one nagging question that won't go away; When is the Cranberries getting back together?

“Yeah I think it's inevitably on the cards in the future you know. I'm kind of working on the solo album right now but in the future if we're all still alive and ready and able to rock, then we will,” The Cranberries' singer tells the Limerick Independent's Alan Jacques in an interview for his Green and Live rock show on Live 95FM.

In fact, back in January Dolores played a set at Dublin's Trinity College with the brothers Hogan to commemorate her being made an honorary patron of Trinity's Philosophical Society.

During a short an intimae acoustic performance the Cranberries performed 'Linger', 'Ordinary Day' and 'Zombie' with the accompaniment of a string quartet.

Dolores told the audience during the performance that she'd been very busy bringing up three children but said there was a chance they might reform in the future.

“The four of us got together recently with all our kids. It was a nice time as the four of us had more to talk about than we ever had when we were in the group.

We actually got to talk about what we were doing for the last five or six years.

And the thing is when you go off and take a break or hiatus from a group you work with different people but what you do is gain new information and new creative ideas, so at that point when the band are ready in the future to reunite I think that we will all bring our new experiences and our new ideas into the equation and probably try to make a record that we never have made before,” O'Riordan explains.

“I think if we were to get back together it would be important to make something that was completely unpredictable, unperceivable to take ourselves to the limit experimentally.

We did realise towards the end that we were going through the motions and we weren't challenging ourselves so during the hiatus everyone went off and did their own thing.

But it's important that you push yourself to do something you've never done before,” she declares.

A lot of the material on O'Riordan's latest solo album was written and inspired by her wild surroundings, 'deep in the forest' of her home in Ontario, Canada.

She is quick to become enthused about her 'nice little escape' far away from society, but what does she make of the ever-changing face of Limerick these days?

“I get back to Limerick a fair bit, I love to cycle there. I was down recently with the parents and it's really lush.

In Dublin, I'm in Howth, and Dublin's so built up but when you drive down the country it gets greener and more lush. It's really beautiful and I love going down to Limerick,” Dolores proclaims.

“I couldn't count how many times I've got lost in Limerick the last couple of times I was down.

I'm always getting lost there. It's so developed now and really beautiful with all the new highways, it's just amazing. It's much better really.

All the flowers and animals and all that stuff in the countryside is lovely you know.

I suppose it's something I  took for granted when I lived there but now I'm like, oh look at this and I'm seeing all these things that I never saw when I lived there,'' she recalls.

Dolores O'Riordan's new album 'No Baggage' will be released in Ireland on Monday August 24 through Cooking Vinyl Records. The album will be preceded by a two-track download only single, 'The Journey/Loser' on Monday August 10.

''I hope listeners will find some comfort with the new album and can relate to what they hear on the record.  The key is to realise that there's always hope. Thinking that can make it so,'' says O'Riordan.

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