Do interviewers really want an honest answer, or just enough to label you? And if you don't want canned responses, maybe not ask such open-ended and really a bit weird questions. Be more specific. I have no idea what the interviewer want out of a question like that. Small-talk or just get warmed up with me saying my name and where I'm from? Or my life-story so far? What if I don't define myself as what I do for a living, would it be weird omitting the fact that I'm a programmer and instead tell about my hobbies? Should I divulge information about myself that you aren't allowed to ask (discrimination etc), but that I feel is me?

Nothing about behavioral interviews are honest. Any person who has practiced interviewing knows canned answers to the popular ones and any person who has interviewed enough has canned questions.

Interesting, since it is the honest answer. It's just condensed by trying to cut out superfluous info.

And as another person argued correctly, I probably didn't fully succeed at that.

Just because an answer is structured, doesn't mean it's dishonest.

Have you tried Amazon interview questions? They expect you to follow the STAR method.

Twice, other than that no. In most behavioral programming interviews I haven't been structured in my answers as being structured came a bit later when I was also applying for consultancies. I was a lot tougher to follow when I wasn't structured.

When I was structured I did use a variation the STAR method when they expected me to. Having a method like that makes things quicker to go through, as long as you make it your own and own it. I adapted the framework a bit by swapping the T (Task) for P (Problem) as it sense to me why you'd need to emphasize the task as opposed to the problem you'd be trying to solve. In rare cases I also adapted it to the SPARAR method, since the result made the problem smaller but didn't fully solve it yet.

I prefer to structure things on the fly though without a pre-defined framework.