Jared Leto brings Mars boys to Edinburgh

JARED LETO knew he would catch plenty of flak from critics over his band 30 Seconds To Mars. After all, as far as actors-turned-musicians go, the results have been fairly dismal for most.

Keanu Reeves and his utterly appalling Dogstar should never have been let off the leash; Russell Crowe's Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts were aptly named; and, well, the less said about Minnie Driver the better.

"I knew what I was walking into, and I knew that I was going to get my ass kicked, and it would have been much easier to just continue making films," says Leto, who has appeared in some of the best movies of the last decade from Fight Club, alongside Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, to a mesmerising performance as a one-armed junkie in the Oscar-nominated Requiem For A Dream.

"But I've been making music since I was a kid and I wasn't going to let that stop me pursuing my dreams," he continues. "Because of the horrible examples who have come before, and stumbled badly and embarrassed themselves, I was determined to walk a different path. I think we've proven ourselves."

There's no denying they're doing well for themselves.

30 Seconds to Mars' self-titled 2002 debut established them as a better than average rock band that thrived on creative exploration and escape. And for their follow-up, 2005's A Beautiful Lie, frontman Leto wanted to explore an entirely new, far more confessional sonic landscape.

"On the first record I created a world, then hid behind it," he explains. "With A Beautiful Lie, it was time to take a more personal and less cerebral approach. Although it's still full of conceptual elements and thematic ideas, it's more wrapped around the heart than the head. It's about brutal honesty, growth, change.

"It's an incredibly intimate look into a life that is at the crossroads. A raw emotional journey. A story of life, love, death, pain, joy, and passion. Of what it is to be human."

Of course, though both albums have done well commercially, and 30 Seconds To Mars have an impressive fan-base, thanks in part to Leto's Hollywood heartthrob status, many critics are still not buying into the band, who also feature Leto's brother Shannon on drums, guitarist Tomo Milicevic and bassist Matt Wacther.

Nevertheless, Leto's commitment cannot be faulted. Having starred in 15 acclaimed films, including Panic Room and Alexander, he turned down a part in Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers to go out on the band's last tour, and he isn't going to be put off by the fact that a great many gifted actors have pumped out some pretty awful albums. "Any time you have a precedent that's negative like that, you're gonna have an uphill battle," he says. "I've never shied from that.

"In our country, actors become presidents. I'm just in a band. What the interesting thing to try to decipher is, why do people want to criticise someone making artistic choices? I'm not going to war. I'm making music."

So, as 30 Seconds prepare to make their Capital debut at the Corn Exchange tonight, how would Leto describe that music?

"Live? Uh, energetic, atmospheric – the cliche I always use is the energy of the Sex Pistols with the grandiosity of Pink Floyd, anything short of that I'll be happy with, but, you know, one thing I look for in a performance is spontaneity, something exciting," he says.

"I think part of what we react to is a kind of mundane state of a lot of this shoe-gazing fashion rock that seems to permeate a lot of the dark corners of the rock world these days. There seems to be this sense of boredom that some people are interested in, for some reason."

So what has inspired him? "I don't know," he muses. "When I was a kid, when I would see shows that changed my life, I would go to see shows where there was my mother taking us to see classic rock concerts, like Zeppelin or when I saw Pink Floyd.

"When I was a little older and I saw Nine Inch Nails, and I saw The Cure – these shows that would leave a mark on me and become a defining part of the sound-track of my youth. We think of those things when we're thinking of our performance.

"I think that people expect a certain amount of size and scope and hopefully something that's a little bit different than the norm.

"I've always been inspired by bands that express different emotions and paint vivid pictures with sound – bands like U2, The Cure, Zeppelin, Floyd. But we're also interested in being as modern as we can. We're striving to do something different, to look forward rather than back, to be free from the shadows of our inspiration and to continue, with our voice to make our mark," he adds.

In the past few years, 30 Seconds To Mars have played alongside many of their peers. "We've played with everyone from being on Lollapalooza a couple of years ago with Jane's Addiction and Incubus and Queens of the Stone Age – that was an incredible experience," says Leto.

"We've opened up for Audioslave and opened up for newer bands like The Used and My Chemical Romance.

"I think, you know, 'peers' is a loose term because all of those people are our peers, really. We have learned a lot from a lot of those bands and I really have a lot of respect for them.

"It's nice to finally get to be doing our own national headlining tour, but it's weird because we're always the odd man out."

Pondering this, he adds, "It's always been odd to kind of fit us in, it's like we're a square peg in a round hole sort of thing. 30 Seconds to Mars has always been a little different."

• 30 Seconds To Mars, Corn Exchange, New-market Road, tonight 7.30pm, 18.50, 0131-443 0404

Actors in bands: The good, bad and ugly

JULIETTE AND THE LICKS: Cape Fear star Juliette Lewis is one of the few success stories of actors turned musicians. Brad Pitt's former beau doesn't look out of place in her rock chick guise and, though her celebrity has undoubtedly helped the band grab attention, they have made two halfway decent albums. Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters filled in on guitar for the band at one point and also invited them to play an outdoor show with them at Hyde Park, which boosted their credibility.

30 ODD FOOT OF GRUNTS: Hollywood bad boy Russell Crowe desperately wants to be a rock star but, sadly, his pub rock outfit 30 Odd Foot of Grunts were awful. Unsurprisingly, 30 Odd Foot of Grunts achieved neither critical nor commercial success before splitting. Perhaps their only claim to fame, other than having an Oscar-winning star in its ranks, is the Frenzal Rhomb song Russell Crowe's Band, in which they are described as "a pile of s***".

DOGSTAR: Some might say Keanu Reeves should stick to acting, but, well, that's up for debate. The Bill and Ted star's band have played some massive gigs with the likes of Bon Jovi and David Bowie, and the excellent Weezer played their first show, opening for them (the shame!). Despite their high-profile gigs, they've never achieved mainstream success. The reason being – they suck, dude!