For seven-strong outfit Nérija it is all about the music – and they're helping to inspire the next generation of female musicians too.

They are one of the hottest tickets at this year’s Glasgow Jazz Festival, playing St Luke’s tomorrow.

Last year saw the band release their first EP, and a full album is being planned.

However they have also attracted plenty of attention for having an all female line-up, standing out in the often male dominated world of jazz.

“Every now and then someone would come up to us, and say it was great to see a bunch of women playing jazz,” says Shirley Tetteh, their guitarist.

“There was a slow realisation that there’s a need to see more women there, but just playing together was really the focus for us. If a young woman or girl picks up an instrument thanks to seeing us, then I’m going to be happy about that, and so would everyone else in the band, but primarily we’re a bunch of friends who hang out together, and we’ve been playing music for years.

“It wouldn’t work if that wasn’t the case. It does say something that if you have a band where the majority are women then it is still seen as a big thing.”

The band initially came together thanks to the Tomorrow Warriors music development group in London. Some of their workshops were particularly focused on helping girls and young women get involved with jazz, and the group that became Nérija would play together, then hang out “eating ice cream and discussing life” afterwards.

Shirley herself has been playing guitar since she was at school, developing her skills before being encouraged to look into jazz as an outlet for her talent.

“I was lucky that no-one made a point of saying that I couldn’t do anything,” she recalls.

“What can happen when you get into jazz is that there can be a massive emphasis on a kind of competition, like ‘how hard can you play?’ For a lot of people, not just women, that can be a turn off. I know that some of the musicians who really got into jazz didn’t have to put up with that attitude.”

Fast forward several years, and now the band are one of the fastest rising acts on the jazz scene, mixing together everything from jazz to hip-hop to afrobeat.

“There is a little bit of common ground, and a lot of all our tastes have converged over time,” she adds.

“We’re all influenced by each other and our peers, like Moses Boyd and Yussef Kamaal. Se we’re sharing all our culture with each other, listening to jazz and hip hop and house, so that all converges.”

While their own work is making waves, this year has also seen them tackle a jazz great, when they covered the Ella Fitzgerald classic Dream A Little Dream as part of the BBC’s celebrations of the legend.

“It was both fun and tricky, because there is so much history with that music and that world,” says Shirley.

“Trying to create something with it that feels honest to you can be something that stumps you, but in the end we figured out an arrangement together that we felt really good about it.”

All of Nérija play in other bands too, based around London. With that in mind, they’ve obviously been affected by the string of tragic events to hit the city recently.

“It’s the strangest backdrop, because you do feel London is being shaken a bit,” she reflects.

“The majority of us are just going around thinking that we’ll be fine, because you’ve got to live your life. I remember walking down from St Paul’s Cathedral to London Bridge just before the attack happened, and it’s hard to comprehend. I think we’re all trying to come together and support each other.”

Nérija, tomorrow, St Luke’s, £15, 7.30pm