‘Maybe we’ll do a Haircut 100 medley’

Scottish alternative rock band Del Amitri are back on the road four years after their big return to the music scene. Justin Currie, who’s been with the band since the very beginning, reveals what’s next for the band and what fans can expect from their 2018 tour DEL Amitri went on hiatus for thirteen years between 2002 and 2014. What brings you back to the stage now?

Well, after we reformed for a few weeks of gigs in 2014 we enjoyed the experience so much (after initially being very sceptical and trepidatious) that we always thought we’d do it again some day.

An offer to do Edinburgh Castle came in, and having made such an arse of it in the nineties we thought it might be good to try and make amends.

And four years felt like a decent enough period of time to stay out of people’s faces. So we’re just doing a week of shows, finishing at Glasgow Barrowlands Ballroom, a venue we’ve been desperate to get back to for seventeen years.

Will the band be playing any new material on this tour?

We deliberately avoided that in 2014, we just wanted to do a comprehensive review of our output between 1985 and 2002.

We called it “The A to Z of Us” and we felt new stuff would have fogged the glass. Besides which, we were so paranoid about trying to attain the same standards of our heyday that we feared the whole audience might sod off to the bogs as soon as we played something unfamiliar!

This time we have given ourselves a little more leeway so we’ll try some new things and see if we can make them fit.

Some of Del Amitri’s extensive repertoire of B-sides have become favourites with fans. Will any of these be getting an airing in July?

On the last tour we threw in a B-side called In The Meantime which we’d never done live. We’ll find something similar - there are a few options.

I’ll ask folk on Twitter what they fancy and then completely ignore all of them. We’re casting about for a new cover too but we’ve not had much inspiration. Maybe we’ll do a Haircut 100 medley?

Is there any sign of a new Del Amitri album on the horizon?

We snuck out a couple of tracks in 2014 in a far flung corner of the web. They’re still fluttering there, uneaten husks. We are discussing what might be justifiable. We have songs. We just don’t quite have a raison d’être. Which is French for excuse.

You formed Del Amitri in your teens and are now touring in your fifties. How have things changed for you as a performer?

The further you travel from your youth the less bloody vital every aspect of the project becomes.

It goes from being a do-or-die obsession, heartbreaking and ecstatic in equal measure, to a warmly pleasurable bit of mild exertion.

You can’t hit the frenzy of yore but you can nail things with a little more solidity and authority perhaps. The angst ebbs and the confidence flows. Not that you’re not still besides yourself with nerves every time you step into the light. But it’s a mission and it’s unfinished. There’s always something more to say.

Del Amitri will be performing at Nottingham’s Royal Concert Hall on July 5. Tickets are available from ticketmaster.co.uk.