THEY might be about to play Glasgow on a Saturday night, but don’t expect too much weekend wildness from Kodaline.

The Irish foursome are enjoying life in the slow lane, as they take a break from recording their third album to play a few gigs, including the O2 Academy.

“We’re all sensible these days,” chuckles the band’s drummer, Vinny May.

“We’re the most un rock n’ roll band ever! When we first started off we’d go out drinking after shows and be waking up the next day with terrible hangovers. Then the next show wouldn’t be as good, and we thought that was unfair on the people who were paying good money to watch us do our thing. Now we pick our moments to let our hair down.”

The group’s brief run of shows caps off a 2017 that saw them release the single Brother and the I Wouldn’t Be EP, while they’ve also been working away on the follow-up to 2015 album Coming Up For Air, which went into the top five in the charts.

With the band now hugely successful, the Dublin lads are aiming to get even bigger for their next release, working with several huge producers.

“With this album we’ve opened up a lot,” says Vinny.

“We have worked with new producers on it. Johnny McDaid from Snow Patrol was basically the executive producer, and he’s written songs with the likes of Ed Sheeran. We also worked with Jonny Coffer, another amazing producer who’s worked with Beyonce.

“It was a bit strange at first, because we had compete control over the first two albums, and letting anyone else in took a bit of getting used to. But you have to evolve to keep up in pop nowadays or else you get left behind, so taking inspiration and hints from guys who’ve worked with these massive global artists was a big thing. It’s still definitely us, it’s definitely Kodaline, but there’s going to be some new sounds too.”

The band’s poppy, easily anthemic rock has made them chart favourites ever since they released debut album In A Perfect World. However with a couple of years having passed since they last released anything, the quartet, who were also recently announced as playing the TRNSMT festival on Glasgow Green in 2018, decided to bring out a new EP this year, not wanting to leave too long a gap between releases.

The four songs all touch upon different themes, but arguably the most emotive is Blood and Bones, a touching track in memory of a departed pal.

“There was a friend of ours, Paul Woods, who passed away six or seven years ago,” says Vinny.

“He was a very dear friend to us, and really Blood and Bones is a song saying that you just wish someone was here because you miss them. People grieve in different ways, and we deal with grief by writing songs. It was a song that came very naturally to us, very easily, because it’s always a feeling that’s there.”

Vinny mentions the importance of family several times throughout our chat, pointing to it as a way that Kodaline have kept themselves down to earth, despite the shows getting bigger and the chart hits piling up.

“Family is going to be a theme running through the next album,” he says.

“We’re very family orientated people and we still have the same group of friends as when we were growing up. They keep your feet on the ground and don’t let you buy into any notions about yourself. You can’t do that – especially when your mam will go to a show and be trying to fix your hair beforehand!”

The drummer’s own family life has changed over the past several months too. In July this year he tied the knot, marrying his longtime girlfriend Carina Elliot.

“We’ve been together for nearly 11 years so I think people would have started to ask questions if we hadn’t got married by now,” he laughs.

“So it’s been a bit of real life taking over the past year. It’s all about trying to balance the two parts (home life and touring life), but my wife is very understanding of what I do, so she understands that when I go away on tour for six or seven weeks that I’m doing what I love. Plus, it helps to pay the bills!”

Kodaline, O2 Academy, Saturday, £25.50, 7pm