JUST four years ago, it wasn’t clear whether there would ever be another Blood Red Shoes album.

The band’s members, Laura-Mary Carter and Steven Ansell, hated each other.

A near-decade of incessant road time and a non-stop pace of life finally took its toll with the Brighton-duo only “about 10 days a year” apart for six or seven years.

“We made four albums in six years and we were playing 150 shows per year for that whole time”, Steven explains.

“For two of those years we even lived together. We had zero space from each other and it was just a pressure cooker, especially for two people like us who are polar opposites in terms of personality. I think all musicians are pretty extreme people and we just ended up taking that out on each other.

“Luckily, we have come through that.”

Laura packed her bags and bought a one-way flight to Los Angeles leading to a complete radio-silence between the two bandmates stretching on for months.

After falling in with a songwriter’s crowd, she

began penning tracks and collaborations with big-time

pop producers and pitching songs for the likes of Rihanna.

On the other hand, Steven “went out and took drugs and went clubbing for about half a year”.

What kept the pair together, the drummer believes, is the fact that they grew up as “punk rock kids”.

He explains: “When a lot of outside forces were throwing obstacles in our way, our fundamental feeling was that nobody else gets to stop our band.

“Only WE get to choose when our band stops, and anything else in the way for us is just a fight we’re ready to have. Perversely it was us bonding together to fight against other people who were trying to screw us over, which helps us restore our friendship and gang mentality.”

Fast-forward to 2019, the pair have come out the other side sounding more assured than ever.

“I think this new album Get Tragic is the biggest jump we’ve made”, Steven adds.

“In the past I think each album has moved on a little bit from the previous one but it’s a fairly gradual evolution.

“This album is a way bigger jump, in terms of songwriting and lyrics, and in terms of the style and instrumentation. It has a lot more electronics and less guitars on this album,the focus has shifted a lot more to grooves and melodies, what makes you dance, what conjures an atmosphere.”

After 14-years of touring as a duo, the pair are now a four-piece on stage.

Their travels have seen them cover 20,000 miles across the US and Canada in just one year.

This year, Blood Red Shoes will be racking up miles from all over the world including UK, Russia and Japan.

On touring, Steven says: “We’re just gonna do it a little smarter this time around. And we have a lot of ideas for new music because this record really opened the door for us to experiment more and try different things so we won’t be leaving four years before the next album.

“Also hoping that after all this time spent in the USA, I will get to marry a movie star or some other celebrity and live somewhere with a heart-shaped swimming pool.”

Here in Glasgow, the band will be performing at intimate city venue Stereo.

The band have chosen to go for smaller venues to feel “like we did when we were new, get back into it, make things fresh”.

“I prefer any stage to no stage”, Steven adds. “I just

love performing. There’s a romanticised myth about small places being more meaningful but it’s not always true, we’ve had terrible, disconnected, awkward shows in tiny places and really intense emotional moments where I feel really in tune with the crowd at festivals of tens of thousands of people.

“Glasgow has always been one of our favourite cities in the UK. I know every band says that right? But seriously from very early on, we made a lot of good friends in the Glasgow scene and we still crash at their places to this day. It’s a really vibrant, artistic, place.

“When Brexit went down I was talking to a good mate from Glasgow and he was like we should declare a people’s republic of Glasgow and Brighton as there are a lot of similarities actually. Just secede from the UK and do our own thing.”

Blood Red Shoes will be performing at Stereo tonight.