Dolores O'Riordan has confirmed that the Cranberries are to get back together in the near future.

Speaking in advance of the release of her solo album, No Baggage, later in the summer, O'Riordan revealed that she got together wit her former band members as recently as last week.

"It was great, I saw them last week when I was down in Limerick. We all got together with all of our kids and had a nice time hanging out," said O'Riordan.

The band, who sold more than 40 million albums worldwide before taking a break in 2003, loosely discussed plans to reform earlier this year, but Dolores has instead insisted that they will return to both the stage and the recording studio in the near future.

"Oh yeah, I would see it on the cards in the future," she said.

"With this album being out I will probably do a tour and in the next year or two it would be a really nice thing to do.

I think creatively we would have to write some amazing music and go where we haven't gone before and make an album that is totally different to what we have done before."

"For so long there was so much pressure. When you are 20 years old and that many people are looking at you, of course you are going to screw up every mistake that you make is publicised.

Dolores O'Riordan

"But when you move away and get away from it all and start to have kids - suddenly it is not all about me, it is about life and you have this real love and this reality that perhaps is something that I craved for so long."

The singer still feels a deep affinity to her home-town.

"Oh yeah, my parents being there is my biggest connection, when I go back it is like as if time hasn't elapsed. I go off walking and I fall right back into some of my childhood moments. It is where the journey began."