Old Dominion Says Band's Decades-Long Friendship Keeps Them 'Humble': 'We're a Self-Policing Organization' (Exclusive)

When Old Dominon's Matthew Ramsey took the stage to accept the band's group of the year win at the 2023 ACM Awards in May, he did so with some kind words for his bandmates — and a cane.

"Thank you to my friends here for holding me up when I needed it," Ramsey said, referring to an ATV accident that sidelined him earlier this year with a broken pelvis.

Flash forward a month and lead singer Ramsey, 45, is all but healed from his injury, but still leaning on bandmates Trevor Rosen, a multi-instrumentalist, guitarist Brad Tursi, bassist Geoff Sprung and drummer Whit Sellers.

"We were friends long before we were a band and there was a moment where we consciously sat down and said, 'The goal here is to be friends when it's over,'" he tells PEOPLE. "We have a friend that says we're a self-policing organization. So when one guy's getting a little too full of himself, we bring him right back down. Or if on the same wave somebody's feeling low, we pull them up."

Right now, all five country stars are feeling anything but low as they gear up for the release of their new, eight-song EP Memory Lane, which comes out on Friday.

The EP features the Old Dominion sound that fans know and love with an elevated twist; electric guitar gives songs like "Freedom Like You" a rock kick, while "Easier Said with Rum" brings the sexy, slow jam R&B vibes.

Rosen, 48, tells PEOPLE he feels that after 16 years as a band, Old Dominion has finally hit a sweet spot in that they have the ability to grow their sound and experiment while not feeling as though they have to stay inside the lines.

"It feels like freedom to be able to take a song that we love and not worry about if we think it sounds like us," he says. "We just truly love trying different things on for size."

Adds Ramsey: "We always think that we're pushing ourselves and we're changing, and then everyone always says, '[New music] sounds like you guys!' It's really been fun to embrace that and know that we are going to sound like us no matter how crazy we feel like we’re getting."

Some of the EP was recorded in Key West, Florida, like the title track and "Easier Said with Rum," which both reflect the location's island vibes. Old Dominion also drew inspiration from touring with Kenny Chesney, which Ramsey and Rosen say can be heard on the more rock-edged songs.

The songs are also a mix of old and new, and their origins range; "I Should Have Married You," for example, was written in the studio, while "Some Horses," the first song they've ever recorded that was not written by them, had been on their radar for over a decade.

"It is important to us to take listeners on a ride a little bit, because we’re all on one," Ramsey says. "If we're truly checking in with ourselves and being authentic, then we have those moments where we are sad or we're feeling regretful or low, but we also want to be reminded that it’s not always like that. We want to bring some levity and we want to make people smile just as much as we want to speak to their heartache."

Getting to this point has been a long time coming for the band, who found success early as songwriters, but didn’t release their debut album until 2015.

For Ramsey and Rosen, having to put their time in before climbing to the top has served them well, and made their (many) wins all the more sweet.

“You’ve seen people be flashes in the pan and make it early and then not have it anymore. And you’ve seen a lot of great people never make it. You've seen a lot of people that you think are average make it,” Rosen says. “We took our craft very seriously, but we never took ourselves too seriously. We knew that it was a gift and we knew it was something that we were trying really hard to be good at, but at the end of the day, we were just friends that were enjoying each other. It keeps you humble.”

With a track record like theirs, staying humble is bound to be a challenge. The group won the ACM Award for group of the year for a sixth year in a row last month, and they’ve also won group of the year at the CMA Awards for five years running.

The band is also in the midst of their No Bad Vibes tour, which began in January and is their first arena headlining tour. 

"I remember when we had the No. 1 party for 'Break Up with Him,' my uncle was like, 'Did you ever imagine this would happen?' And the answer is yes — if I didn't, I would've quit," says Ramsey. "I had to keep going. We did imagine this, and we did, for lack of a better word, sort of manifest it. We wanted it to happen and we knew it could happen. We also knew it was a very real possibility that it wouldn’t happen. We were very realistic about it, but we just loved every moment of it."

For now, the band (who text each other in a group chat called "Just the Five of Us") is enjoying putting new music into the world and sharing it with their fans.

They're even hard at work on a forthcoming full-length album that Ramsey says is "the best music that we've made."

"For years and years we've said, 'We are Old Dominion, and that means everyone.' That means the five of us and the crew and our fans. And that has been our goal from the get-go: how do we make this a feeling and not five people?" he says. "I feel like [we're] finally getting there."