IT has been a strange year for Glass Animals.

There was the gig at Colorado’s famous Red Rocks venue that took place in a storm.

Then there was the time that the Westboro Baptist Church protested outside one of their shows, and music festivals have tried to ban their fans from bringing pineapples in.

Their appearance at the Electric Fields festival in Dumfries tomorrow is really going to have to go some to stand out for the foursome, who are seeing venues get bigger and bigger.

“It’s happened really slowly for us,” says singer Dave Bayley, ahead of the festival slot, where they’ll play on a bill with the likes of Dizzee Rascal, Arab Strap and the Jesus and Mary Chain.

“It’s not like we were thrown into big venues. We started playing pubs and small places – the first time we played Scotland was at Broadcast I think, and there was literally seven people there, so it has gone up in small increments. When you take a step back and look at how far you’ve come then it’s quite overwhelming.”

The group’s smart, artful pop music is the main reason for that, with last year’s How To Be A Human Being nearly cracking the Top 20 in the charts and earning a nomination for the Mercury Music Prize.

Yet the most recent interest in the Oxford band has nothing to do with their music, but is all about pineapples.

Yes, really. Organisers at the Reading and Leeds festivals tried to ban fans from bringing pineapples in.

“As a joke I started trying to fit a pineapple into artwork that accompanied the first album,” says Dave, explaining their fruity problem.

“People started cottoning on to the pineapples, and at one show people brought one along and I put it on the guitar amp. Since then people have started bringing more and more of them along and it has gotten a bit mad. We’ve actually made a big gold disco ball like a pineapple in the hope that it would encourage people to stop, but it had the opposite effect.

“It’s quite a big thing to be carrying one along to a festival, having it in your tent and everything else. I actually did the same with watermelons for the new album’s artwork, so I’m hoping that doesn’t start too…”

Fruits aside, the band are in a healthy state. Their recent American tour saw them play the biggest venues of their career, including the famous Red Rocks near Denver that U2 memorably rocked back in the 1980s.

Mother nature decided to visit too.

“Red Rocks was incredible, one of the craziest things I will ever do,” says Dave.

“You can’t really explain what walking out there is like. It’s very steep and it's like a wall of heads in front of you, that just goes up and away from you instantly. There was a flash flood onstage with thunder and lightning, and eventually the venue flooded and everyone evacuated for an hour or so while the storm went over, before we went back on.”

Not everyone Stateside is a fan, though. The Westboro Baptist Church, the group known for their hate speech, turned up outside a gig in Kansas to protest against the band.

“It was all bizarre,” recalls the singer, who was originally born in America before moving to England.

“We went to speak to them to find out what they were doing at our show, and they were almost afraid to tell us. They didn’t seem to have an exact reason. We have a diverse fanbase and they seemed to disagree with that, and they don’t like my heritage, as I’m from a Jewish family.

“What they really want is to get a rise out of people but most of our fans just ignored them.”

What fans haven’t ignored is the whole culture created around How To Be A Human Being. Dave created an entire world for the characters featured in each song, with individual websites too.

It helped writing the songs easier, as he knew what each character was like, and he likes going beyond the music.

“The music is the main thing but I like there being a whole universe around that album,” he explains.

“Hopefully the album plays stronger from start to finish and is greater than the sum of its parts. It should be cohesive, and then the artwork, videos and stage design all create one world around it.”

Glass Animals play Electric Fields tomorrow. Day tickets are £65.