Animation stop playing after coming back to the previous scene

Hi,
I am new to the unity animations but with the help of a few tutorials, I managed to create one that works pretty well. My game consists of two scenes, the main menu, and the actual game. The player starts in the main menu, clicks play to play the game and when he dies, he is put back to the main menu. The animation of a UI element plays in the main menu scene as the game is started. However once the player plays the game, dies and is put back to the main menu scene, the animation no longer plays (but should). Could someone please explain why this could be so?