Elbow's new collection 'The Best Of' doesn't mean the band is coming to an end.

The 'One Day Like This' hitmakers are celebrating their 20-year-career as a band with the new release, but front man Guy Garvey has pointed out that they're simply moving in time with the music industry by bringing out the compilation.

Explaining the decision to The Sun newspaper, he said: ''It's a way of leading people to your music. My first Fleetwood Mac album was a 'Best Of' and my first Leonard Cohen album was a 'Best Of'.

''We are an album band before we are anything else. But you've got to move with the times. The nature of Spotify is the 'Best Of' will be on the front page, and hopefully it will lead people through all our seven albums.''

Indeed, the group has already made great progress after starting work on their eighth studio album - the follow-up to 'Little Frictions', which was released in February - and they're moving things along nicely.

Garvey added: ''We are halfway through it. The themes keep changing and therefore the words keep changing, but the music is developing at a steady pace.

''It is a little bit more difficult now I am in London full-time but we got together to start it off for a couple of weeks, then things get fired down the line to-and-fro. We will have to get together before phase two and also January/February to get ready for the tour in March.''

Although they're looking to the future, 'The Best Of' has still put the band - completed by Pete Turner and brothers Craig and Mark Potter - in a nostalgic frame of mind.

Guy admitted: ''Somebody posted a picture of me with Iggy Pop the other day. Somebody said, 'Is that actually you?' I was unrecognisable, youthful and thin. But that we are still here is not lost on me at all.

''The music industry has changed and people don't buy music in the way they used to but you can sit and mourn or you can now get from your bedroom direct to your listeners.''