Ok, I think I see the problem. It looks like you've done a planar map of the object, which won't be sufficient, since you need the sides to be mapped to an area as well as the front and back (which were parallel with your plane).

I would try either a cubic map (if that's an option, something like that anyway) or automatic mapping. That will ensure you have UVs specific to the sides of your object. Essentially the goal is to unfold the entire 3D model into 2D space, so any area on the model in 3D should have it's own corresponding area on the 2D area in the UV texture editor. I hope that makes sense and helps somewhat.