One thing you can’t criticize Angels & Airwaves for lacking is ambition. Equipped with an arsenal of strobe lights and U2-esque guitar riffs, the group displayed their vision at a trio of L.A. area concerts last week. As frontman Tom DeLonge said in an interview before Wednesday’s show, live performances are an important aspect of that progression.

“Someone said [to me] last night, ‘the people that come to the shows, it’s like they’re coming to a play that they’re a part of,’” he said. “I think that’s what’s really cool about it. That’s what Angels & Airwaves is.”

Angels & Airwaves was unveiled two years ago at Pomona’s the Glass House, but it initially materialized from the wake of Blink-182’s acrimonious split in 2005.

“Within a couple weeks after the breakup of the band, I had to plan out the next part of my life,” DeLonge said. “I think in putting together all the elements of what I wanted to be surrounded by, we came up with kind of this great idea of the beginnings of a movement.”

The first phase of the undertaking, We Don’t Need to Whisper, was released in May 2006, followed by an arena tour supporting Taking Back Sunday. The band then took some time off to record its second effort as a continuation of the seeds that were already planted.

“The first record, Whisper, was about a philosophical idea that to overcome a war within yourself, you have to believe in infinite possibility,” DeLonge said, “kind of a science fiction take on what the universe is all about. I-Empire was about the inaction of that idea within your own life. So when you put the records together, it’s about the change in an individual and a change in the way that individual sees the world.”

For DeLonge, it turned out to be a journey he would undergo himself, including battling an addiction to painkillers he had quietly developed.

“You feel invincible when you’re on drugs, which is one of the great things about them, but the bad thing is that it’s all kind of fake,” DeLonge said. “One of the big reasons why I needed to switch things around was I needed to practice the message that I was putting out there — that was always tearing away at me, that I was saying that people can do all these things if they really believe, but I couldn’t conquer my own [problems].”

The song “Lifeline,” which drew additional inspiration from the poem “Footsteps in the Sand,” chronicles the experience.

“It was the first song I sang once I got off all the narcotics, and the idea that someone was going through a troubled time, but there was someone following behind you to take care of you was inspiring to me,” DeLonge said. “But it doesn’t have to be God. It could be someone who just loves you … It’s up to the listener to make up the second half of the story.”

Although DeLonge doesn’t consider himself religious, he admitted to being very spiritual, and he embraces a postmodern view on the subject.

“There are religious undertones to what we do, but I think people like to take them and define them in their own categories,” he said. “A lot of people come up to me and go, ‘Are you Christian?’ I was raised a Christian, but I’m not, you know? I think I’m too educated and traveled to define myself that way. The band is really about a ‘one world, one love’ kind of thing.”

Meanwhile now that he is sober again, DeLonge has his sights on bigger and better things. This summer the band will be playing Warped Tour, which he originally took part in as a member of Blink-182 several years ago. In addition, the group is currently developing several things, including a documentary and feature-length film, an Internet operating system called Modlife and a partnership with NASA for an upcoming tour.

“We’re going to try and take this as far as it can possibly go,” DeLonge said, “and in our minds that’s stadiums.” While Blink-182 was a band that in a way defined a generation, DeLonge is looking to the future and how he wants Angels & Airwaves to take that connection one step further.

“Blink took years to catch on but with Angels & Airwaves; it’s like within these past 12 months we’ve really become a band that’s going to be around for a long time,” he said. “I think our next record is going to be incredible, and I think that it will hopefully put this band in specific venues to where we’re able to present the show that interacts with every sense of the human body, almost like science fiction. The idea to take people on a journey and to feel wonderful. That’s the idea.”