Tom Bailey, singer, songwriter, bass, guitar, keyboards

Thompson Twins were a seven-piece, rag-bag, guitar-based band living in a squat when I met Alannah Currie, who was also squatting in London. She was in an anarchic improv band, the Unfuckables, who were clearly not destined for Top of the Pops, but there was something very exciting about her. When I invited her to come on at the end of a Thompson Twins gig, she stole the show.

We slimmed down to a three-piece with Alannah, Joe Leeway [keyboards, percussion, vocals] and myself. Suddenly we were a recognisable trio who could all fit in one car. After I bought a synthesiser, our track In the Name of Love became a dance/club sensation, which opened doors in America. Until then, we’d always vaguely hoped our music would do well, but after that we thought: “Why don’t we actually design it to do well?”

Hold Me Now came about after we’d gone off to write songs in some house somewhere and had a creative disagreement that spilled over into personal insults. But behind that was real affection and a relationship we’d kept secret from the press. We soon made up and immediately wrote Hold Me Now about that process. The song came very easily. It felt more mature than the clubby stuff. It was slower, heartfelt, more emotional, and being about real stuff gave it authenticity.

I was keen to record it as soon as possible but Alex Sadkin, our regular producer, wasn’t available, so I went into RAK Studios and recorded most of it myself, something I’d never done before. Alex came in at the end and wanted to redo some of the vocals. Joe and I shared the falsetto bits. We knew we were on to something because everyone who heard it said it was going to be a big hit, including the BBC.

We released it in November 1983 because in those days everyone wanted a Christmas No 1. We were away recording at Compass Point in the Bahamas when Hold Me Now came out and had very little contact with the outside world. We came out of those sessions to find it racing up the charts, then it just became this monster hit.

Alannah Currie, singer, songwriter, percussion

I remember a van pulling up outside with all this gear and the whole band moving into a really bad squat opposite mine. When Tom gave me a lift to the tube, we hit it off straight away. In those days, loads of bands came from the squat scene: you had free housing, you’d bunk the tube and have the run of London.

The Unfuckables only did one gig but we were wild feminists who’d fill eggs with black paint and throw them at sexist adverts. We were fearless. Once I joined the Twins, we only had each other so really went for it. I was a woman musician at a time when there weren’t many and Joe was Black, so we got a hard time.

Everybody focused on Tom, who’d had classical training – while we were dirty punks. But we always tried to find the common ground between the three of us. I remember us all sitting in my squat deciding we wanted to be a new type of band – synthesisers and drum machines brought incredible freedom. After being broke for so long, suddenly we could do what we wanted: try to make amazing records.

Hold Me Now is basically a letter from me to Tom, and him to me, with interjections from Joe. I never had “a picture, pinned to my wall”, but that lyric was inspired by a photo-booth picture of me and Tom snogging, which I kept inside my writing book. I scrawled most of the lyrics down like a love letter, one of those frenzied things you do to find out what you’re really thinking. Then we tailored the words as if they were coming from Tom, because he’d be singing it.

Everything was done so quickly it was absolutely from the heart. Then the song just seemed to take on a life of its own. It was such a huge, bombastic, painful but madly great time in our lives. Tom and I have two children together but while we’re no longer a couple, or a band, but all three of us are like family and stay in touch. Occasionally, I’ll hear Hold Me Now playing somewhere and my heart just goes: “Ohh.”

• Industry & Seduction: A Thompson Twins Collection is out now on three CD deluxe set, coloured vinyl two LP set and CD. Tom Bailey tours the UK in September