THEY’RE the band who deliberately went into hiding last year – but expect to see a lot more of Creeper in 2017.

The rockers, a mixture of glam, Goth and punk, briefly vanished last September after playing the Reading and Leeds festivals, with their social media spinning an elaborate horror movie style tale.

It resulted in missing posters, eerie recorded messages, fans searching their native Southampton for clues to where the band had gone and some people thinking the band had genuinely disappeared.

“It’s very difficult to do something like that in this day and age,” says Will Gould, Creeper’s lead singer and a man thankfully easier to get hold of than his reputation would suggest.

“Nowadays, if you watch a man do a magic trick you can find out how he did straight away, whereas when I grew up watching David Blaine I thought there was actually something wrong with him. Kids aren’t susceptible now, so to have people not be sure what was happening was great.

“It was a reaction to how every band promotes their record by filling social media and over-sharing everything, which is just boring. People in bands talk enough like it is – look at me now! What was cool was that we made more noise by making no noise at all.”

Now the band are ready for their debut album, Eternity, In Your Arms, which is out tomorrow, and followed by a show at the Garage on Sunday. It’s a concept record with massive hooks, inspired by anything from Peter Pan to Blade Runner and has already led the band to be compared to My Chemical Romance.

“All my favourite records have concepts to them, like David Bowie and the Spiders From Mars,” says Will.

“I always wanted something that had a story and a concept all the way through, something that was ambitious. There’s a danger that you can make it a big overcomplicated mess so I guess we’ll find out on Friday what people think.

“I feel that we as a band are more interested in telling a story than just writing songs. It’s a case of not being too ridiculous but I don’t want us to be boring, where we are boxed in or sound like one thing all the time.”

It’s a style that Will hopes can provide escapism above anything else.

“What Creeper are trying to do is put a glam spin on 2017 and dress it up as something that you can get lost in,” he explains.

“I feel like the world is on fire at the moment and we need magic more than ever before, to escape to and give us a place to immerse yourself in. Music has always allowed that over the years, like how glam rock was reacting to what the country was doing in the early 70s, and it feels like everything is repressed now. It’s important to have pomp and silliness back in music alongside harsh grittiness.”

All of this would be meaningless if the band didn’t have a stack of cracking tunes to back up their words with, but they have some huge songs in their arsenal.

James and guitarist Ian Miles bonded over a love of classic cinema and played in punk bands before forming Creeper, a totally different form of music.

Will thinks the band’s DIY ethos goes back to those early days.

“What punk rock gave me when I was younger was the feeling that I could put gigs on, or sing,” adds Will.

“There’s an elitism in music where it can feel like it’s a daunting world to get into, and punk rock told me that I could just get up there and play.

“I was very unsure of myself when younger and that really built my confidence levels up. It’s still ingrained in us that no-one will do it for us, and if they do it, they’d do it wrong.”

Creeper, Sunday, Garage, £13.50, 6.30pm