After leaving Mumford & Sons, the musician finds his faith and his life

Former Mumford & Sons banjo player Winston Marshall struggled with ‘cancellation’ when he was in the band and now that he’s gone, Marshall says he’s free.

Marshall officially left Mumford & Sons, a British folk and rock band, in June 2021. He first took a break from the band when he faced intense backlash from the left for tweeting that he liked to read the book by journalist Andy Ngo, Unmaskedwhich explores the dangers of Antifa.

Marshall told CBN Faithwire that he “didn’t anticipate that my comments on a book critical of the far-left could be construed as an equally obnoxious far-right endorsement.”

Initially, after the backlash, Marshall apologized. However, it opened his mind to quitting the group, as he could then speak clearly without negatively affecting his group members.

“I could stay and continue to censor myself, but it will erode my sense of integrity, eat away at my conscience,” he wrote. “I already felt that beginning. Then the only way forward is for me to leave the group.”

The freedom he felt afterwards was not quite what he expected from this difficult decision.

“I found my soul. I felt I could sleep again,” he told The Sunday Times. “It’s amazing the effect it had on me. It’s been completely liberating. I feel like it was the right decision.”

He started a podcast after leaving the group called Marshall Matters in which he speaks freely, including about cancel culture.

“Obviously artists have the right to boycott. The difference now is it’s ‘shut it up or I’m out,'” he says. “It’s so weird, and I don’t think it ends well. Musicians’ careers are all about self-expression, so how can they think it’s going to work if they’re not ready for it. that people express themselves?

Marshall also expressed his awareness of what was real in his life before and what was not.

“I don’t miss fame. I don’t think it’s real,” he told The Times. “I was seduced by it. I was drawn into it. Particularly through this recent experience, I realized that many of my friends in this world were not my true friends.”

Although it was hard to leave the band, Marshall is glad he did. In 2020, he also divorced his wife of four years, Dianna Agron. It was then that he said that he “came back to Christ”.

“If I can quote Kanye West, he said, ‘Fear God and you won’t be afraid of anything else,'” Marshall said in an interview with Premier Christian News. “And I like that because for me, I fear God. And I think that’s true. That if you fear God sincerely, then you don’t fear the problems of the world, the problems of the world.”