Slash has given an update on Guns N’ Roses’ new music, confirming that the band have been working on material while on enforced downtime due to the coronavirus pandemic.

• Read more: Sublime, meet ridiculous: Guns N’ Roses’ Download headline set reviewed

The band were meant to be touring until September 2020 but were forced to cancel their dates because of the disease outbreak.

During an interview with music store Sweetwater, the guitarist was asked if he’d finished any music projects while in lockdown. “I’ve been pretty much a homebody, but I’ve been back and forth between my studio in the house and doing a lot of writing and recording on my own,” he said.

“I’ve been jamming with Duff [McKagan, bassist] and I’ve been jamming with Axl [Rose, frontman] and I’ve been doing stuff like that, so we’ve been getting some work done that way. But I haven’t been doing much else.”

Slash added that he hadn’t been collaborating with anyone else during this time and that he was “basically just focusing on writing new music and recording demos and recording guitar stuff for Guns and whatnot”.

The star most recently spoke about the band’s next project in September 2019. “Obviously, everybody knows that we’re working on new material, which is really exciting, and so, that’s really primarily what the focus is,” he said at the time.

“I think at the end of the day, everybody wants to have a full album released. I don’t think that’s really changed all that much. But there’s a different way of putting stuff out initially nowadays more so than… I mean, there’s always been the single, but now you sort of look at that preliminary release a little bit differently now. All things considered, it’s like the Wild West out there; there is no formula for any of it.”

In June 2019, the guitarist confirmed the band were “just getting started” on a new record.