It has been a strange few years for pop punk band Tigers Jaw.

They were once a five-piece, but now they’re a duo. They were an independent band, who are currently on a big label. Oh, and their main songwriter suffered writer’s block.

But for Ben Walsh and Brianna Collins, the heads never went down.

“There’s still opportunities, there’s still growth and we’re still accomplishing new things,” says Ben, who’ll play Stereo on August 22 with the new-look group.

“For Brianna and I, it was a big challenge doing this album just the two of us. We didn’t know how it would go or turn out. Brianna was writing songs for the first time in her life and it was a completely new experience. But it still felt organic and like Tigers Jaw, and we’re so proud of it.

“The challenges we experienced were never stressful, they were fun, like ‘how are we going to figure this one out, or re-arrange this?’ It was never an argumentative thing, if one of us was feeling a certain way we’d talk it out. We were always able to communicate with each other and talk about it.”

The results are spin, the group’s fifth album and a snappy collection of emo-tinged rock, with enough melody on tracks like Guardian, June and Brass Ring to snag radio and TV airplay. It is a surprising comeback from a band that could have been heading for the scrapheap.

In 2013 three band members, including vocalist and songwriter Adam McIlwee, announced they were leaving. Ben and Brianna completed an already scheduled UK tour with some fill-in musicians, and that was assumed to be that.

Then the original line-up reconvened to release another album, Charmer, before properly calling it a day, but with Ben and Brianna announcing they would keep the group as a two piece. As if that wasn’t enough, Ben then was hit with writer’s block, a big problem given he was going from sharing writing duties to being the group’s main writer.

“I was totally stuck and I had no lyrical ideas, no concepts, nothing,” he says.

“I was getting worried, because it was a couple of months away from recording and we only had a few songs. I’ve a pretty close relationship with the guys from [punk band] the Menzingers, and Tom May is a distant relative of mine. He had a similar thing where you feel creatively tapped out and had found this book called Writing Better Lyrics, which is about taking creative writing exercises and applying them to songwriting.

“Some of them really helped, like a stream of consciousness one where you set a timer for 10 minutes first thing in the morning to write. The idea was that as your day goes on social filters crop up. Writing first thing, however, was just taking a word as a launching pad and it didn’t matter where you ended up, and it really helped me, like doing problem solving.”

After that was cracked and the album was recorded, it was time to find a home. Given that Tigers Jaw have always been a punk band, there were quite a few raised eyebrows when they signed up to Black Cement Records, a new imprint of major labels Atlantic Records and Warner Brothers.

Had the group sold out?

“We owed it to ourselves to see what was out there and have some conversations with people,” says Ben.

“The more we talked to them the more we felt at ease. You hear horror stories about bands signing to major labels and losing control, and when we were coming up, it was the tail end of major labels having a ton of money. The whole system was starting to fail. But it became very evident that Black Concrete had done their research about us, they weren’t just trying to sign any young band dumb enough to agree to what they offered.”

With all of that now behind them, the duo are getting back to the simple business of hitting the road and playing some gigs again. That includes Stereo later this month, returning to Glasgow after a past show that left some memories for Ben.

“It was at Audio and the show was packed,” says Ben.

“In the middle of the set this guy got up onstage and just started chanting ‘Tigers, Tigers, Tigers Jaw and got everyone chanting along! It was really cool. We need to hire him as our hype man for all our gigs.”

Tigers Jaw, Stereo, August 22, £14, 7pm

JONATHAN GEDDES