He might be originally from Derbyshire and now live Stateside, but Lloyd Cole will always be an honorary Glaswegian.

It was while studying philosophy and English at the University of Glasgow that he met the Commotions, leading to three albums and several chart hits.

The city is also where he briefly earned the unlikely nickname Basher and fell out with the likes of Edwyn Collins, but we’ll come to that later.

“If I hadn’t been in Glasgow I have no idea what I would be doing now,” says Lloyd, who begins a three night solo stint at Oran Mor tonight.

“There’s every possibility that I wouldn’t be doing music. In 1983 I was someone who could barely sing and had a few ideas. The making of the record was nearly always done by anyone other than me, and without working with the Commotions it’s hard to imagine what I would have done.”

Looking back to the past seems quite fitting, because Lloyd’s current tour has a retrospective theme. He is only playing material from the years 1983 to 1996, while he has just released a box set, Lloyd Cole In New York, covering the years 1988 to 1996, when he started his solo career.

The set features Smile If You Want To, the ‘lost’ fifth album that was never released in the 90s.

“It was such a long, tortuous procedure to leave Universal Music,” reflects Lloyd.

“I had formed the Negatives and as a result lost focus on the Smile tracks, and ended up using a couple of them for the Negatives. So I’m thrilled that it’s together now, because even though the songs have been out there, when they’re on different records they’re not mastered properly and don’t sound like one record, whereas here they do.”

The years since then have seen Lloyd release an album with the Negatives, gain another backing group in the Leopards and release albums focused on both rock and his love for electronic music, so a nostalgic tour has been a surprise.

“I’m not in a hurry these days,” explains Lloyd.

“I’ve got some songs for the next record mulling around in my head, but that’s it. There hasn’t been a cut off point I’ve had to inflict on this tour, and the demand has been there for these shows.

“Doing this tour brings back good and bad memories. With the Commotions, we never stopped working. We all came from backgrounds that were not privileged and we were all a little worried that if we didn’t work super hard we would be forgotten immediately.

“People waited five years for the second Blue Nile record, so I think they would have waited more than a year for the second Commotions record. But we were led to believe that we’d be forgotten if that album [Easy Pieces] wasn’t out for Christmas 1985. For the most part it was a fun five years though, just bloody busy.”

Those memories also include how a songwriter known for referencing Eva Marie Saint, Norman Mailer and Simone de Beauvoir wound up being briefly nicknamed Basher…

“There was a flat on Gibson Street where there was always a party at Hogmanay, and there was supposed to be a fight with me and Edywn Collins there one year, but that never happened,” he says.

“However in my last year in Glasgow, I did get named Basher by the rest of the Commotions. I was in a nightclub one night and the bartender was being very friendly.

“Some bloke came up to me and went ‘are you trying to get off with my girlfriend’, and asked if I wanted to take it outside. I was in such a bad mood I went ‘alright,’ and then he backed down. The Commotions thought this was hilarious...”

As for his relationship with Edywn Collins, things are much more mellow now, aided by a spot of babysitting.

“Edywn and I were never friends although we’re a bit friendlier these days,” he adds.

“The Postcard Records people hated us at the start, because I think Edwyn and Alan Horne thought they were the only people here who liked the Velvet Underground.

“But Edwyn was playing New York back in about 1992, and we somehow found out they needed a babysitter for their son William. We were going to the concert, so we let them share the babysitter we had booked for our son, and things have been cordial ever since then.”

Lloyd Cole, tonight to Thursday, Oran Mor, sold out, 7pm