Two Door Cinema Club are back at the Barrowland for two nights – but the group’s success nearly finished their friendship.

The trio returned last autumn with their first release in three years, Gameshow.

And the reason for the gap between records was that they needed a break from music, from touring and from each other.

“You’re in such a bubble and everything is under a microscope, together and individually,” says Kevin Baird, their bassist.

“Little things that don’t mean anything become these huge issues and you start having disagreements… It’s a issue a lot of young people have, where you are struggling to talk and you’re not really conversing, so we’re very conscious of talking about things now and not leaving the little things be left unsaid until they become big things.”

The band’s previous release, Beacon, had catapulted their dance-guitar pop mix into the big leagues, landing at number two. It was a big step up in success from their debut release Tourist History, which had been a strong seller in itself.

However when the trio – Kevin, Alex Trimble and Sam Halliday – got in touch with each other again, the main priority was trying to become pals again.

“We first started approaching everything as ‘could we be friends again’ at first,” says Kevin.

“It felt important to put the band to one side and not have it as a goal to reach. We didn’t want to sort out our relationships with each other purely to get the band back together, it was more just ‘let’s see if we can be mates again’ and we started hanging out.

“The basis of our friendship has always been music, so once we started hanging out and realising that things weren’t as bad as we thought, we started talking about music again and saying what we were listening to, and everything else went from there.”

Having got over that hurdle, the band started to throw some ideas about. The likes of David Bowie and Prince were mentioned as inspirations, and the result is a record produced in Los Angeles with Jacknife Lee that comes out swinging, featuring both big radio friendly 1980s inspired pop tunes and also some artier sounds.

“We had a clean break in our minds as to what the band was supposed to be and to sound like,” says Kevin.

“I suppose it’s pop in the traditional sense of the world, and we’ve always been about that – the basis of every song we’ve ever done has those pop melodies running through it. We always want to make something that’s successful and that people can dance to, and we wanted to make people dance through groove this time, rather than tempo.”

That will bring the band to the Barrowland later this week, for a two night stint on Friday and Saturday. The group are very familiar, including spending several months in the city when they were working on Beacon, and returning to the city’s most legendary venue is something that Kevin can’t wait for.

“Venues like the Barrowland have been great in the past, and we lived in Glasgow for around a year writing the second album, so most of the songs from then were framed around being Glaswegian for a bit,” says Kev.

“We’ve played so many awesome gigs at the Barras, and seen so many awesome shows when we lived there, that we can’t wait to do two nights in a row.

“Places like the Barrowland are being squeezed out (by modern venues), but you want places like that to keep going, because you can’t replicate that atmosphere in a new place.”

Speaking of places, Kevin’s been living in Los Angeles for the past few years. He’s seen the rise of Donald Trump first hand while there, and feels the situation has its roots in people banning other ideas, rather than talking to each other.

“There’s a culture now of banning everything, all it’s doing is stifling debate and if you have a more extreme view then you’re getting so vilified as a racist,” he argues.

“You have to talk about these things, or else you’ll end up with these huge shocks like Brexit or Trump. We’re too busy trying to ban things when we should just talk more and listen to why they’re frustrated.

“We’re pushing ourselves into bubbles where we are sold a reality where we are more connected with people but we’re just regurgitating our own views and pretending that’s the whole world.”

Two Door Cinema Club, Barrowland, Friday and Saturday, £21, 7pm

JONATHAN GEDDES