HUE and Cry have a new album out, September Songs and the brothers from Coatbridge are touring again.

“Someone said recently we were beginning our fourth decade of music, and it made me pause for a moment, but it’s true,” says Pat, grinning.

“But there isn’t any less vigour or curiosity on my part. We still have lots to do.”

Was the hiatus necessary? The brothers parted. They got back together. They bickered. Pat once said; ‘The public psychodrama with my brother Greg made the Gallagher brothers look like a pair of hand-holding diplomats.’

“There wasn’t really a hiatus as such. It’s more that we did things for a while that people didn’t quite understand.

“We decided not to make pop records from about 1995 to the early 2000s. We lost ourselves, enjoyably as it happens, in the love of jazz fusion.”

Pat adds, grinning; “I loved the twenty minute saxophone solos but we probably burned off most of our audience.”

The harmony between the pair returned after Pat pushed his brother to appear on 2005 ITV show, Hit Me Baby One More Time.

How far up Greg’s back did Pat have to bend his brother’s arm to appear on it?

“A considerable way,” he says, smiling. “Gregory was a producer at the time working with a lot of scratchy, very noisy indie bands. I think he thought he was a Nirvana producer.

“I literally had to frog-march him into the television studios in London.

“I said to him, ‘You can be Kurt Cobain, I’ll be Liza Minnelli and we’ll split the difference.’

“And it worked. We met somewhere in the middle and it was fine.

“It was such fun we began to wonder if we could write pop songs again. It was great get back to exploring the pure elements of our music.”

He adds; “That all works in terms of what we are doing now. We have a sustainable model in terms of revenue and lifestyle.

“This means we can make the music we want, which is a rare thing for any artist to be able to say.”

The Kane brothers have made some terrific music over the years, albums such Stars Crash Down, hits such as Violently.

Pat Kane’s voice haunts and delights, it has a real tone and it’s not surprising he and Greg made an album of Sinatra covers.

The pair have an understanding, a short hand, whether easy or, at times, uneasy.

“Yes, and that’s important. Whether it’s a psychological or biological understanding, but because of that we can each bring different stuff to the space.

“Sometimes we’ll each bring something from left field but it can integrate and work.

“Right now, we feel our ballad album is the best thing we’ve ever done.

“It’s full of oddness and strangeness, as well as big heart-beating songs.

“The process between us is working.”

What of the lyrical content? Pat Kane is also a journalist, an analyst of the world around him. What’s been pouring into this songs?

“A lot of the songs were written around the time of the Referendum which to say the very least was an emotional time, a moment of high drama.

“What is fascinating is that when you write a song that’s about an emotion of solidarity or despair or yearning, the song transforms into something else.

“It all clicks together, but the click isn’t something you could have predicted.”

The other factor in the production of songs is the Brothers Kane have changed over the years.

They are different creatures from the hirsute young men who arrived in the Glasgow music scene in the eighties.

“We are now mensches,” he says of the Yiddish word which means someone of honour, of responsibility.

“We are men of substance, men surrounded by daughters and children, with infirm people to care for and we’ve had to cope with death and disaster.”

He adds, grinning; “At fifty-two you can’t help be informed by this added experience.

“As Leonard Cohen once said ‘I ache in the places I used to play.’”

What about the notion songwriters only have so many ideas in the pot?

“Writer Malcolm Gladwell came out with a book Outliers in which he talked about the 10,000 hours rule.

“Basically, this suggested that if people put this amount of hours into their craft they have achieved mastery over their domain.

“Gregory and I worked out that we’ve put in around 20,000 hours. That doesn’t mean people will like what we do, but no matter what anyone thinks of Hue and Cry, we know what we’re doing.”

He adds; “Most bands really have one song in them. The Beatles had two, and Stevie Wonder had three.

“I would say we’re in the one-song scenario, aspiring to two. We know of the giants whose shoulders we stand upon.”

•Hue and Cry play Paisley Town Hall on March 26 and Glasgow’s ABC on ADD> September Songs is out now.