Bright new future of rock and roll or just another Glasgow band. Does it really matter? Does anything really matter? Do we really exist? Did Tim Glynne-Jones really ask these questions?

You don't have to be Simon Le Bon to realise that there are two sides to a wave; you can surf on it or you can sink beneath it. Simon did both but that's beside the point.

You don't have to be particularly observant to notice the wave of talent swelling out of Glasgow these days. The groups draw the attention of the press, the little plastic tags come out and the groups disperse to take on the world with the label 'Glasgow Band' hanging round their necks.

Strangers and Brothers are one such 'Glasgow Band'. Their first single 'Sensational' never quite managed to capture the quality of their live shows but they hope that their second, due out this month, will meet with enough critical acclaim to put them right on the map.

You don't have to read the papers to know it's unwise to talk to Strangers so it was down to the brothers, Jack and Charles Reilly, to assess the wave and its effect on their progress. Surfing, sinking or side-stepping it altogether?

"I don't think it really makes any difference," Jack told me. "If we're good we're good and if we make it we make it.

"All bands, when they come out of Glasgow, they don't want to be put down as another Glasgow band. I'm sure I'm speaking for them all. It doesn't matter that we were born in Glasgow. It's like we just happened to be born with a willie, you know what I mean:"

It's all very well saying you don't want to be pigeon-holed but there must be benefits. It's still a label that attracts attention. Lead guitarist and ex-Commotion, Charles, took up the thread.

"There's terrible cliques up in Glasgow as far as the bands are concerned and a lot of us fear that we'll get caught up in it. It's pretty two-faced sometimes. It depends on what you want, what you do and as far as we're concerned we don't want any part of it."

"We're not really bothered," continued Jack. "If we're playing hippy music and we're being slagged by the clique for being hippies well that's fair enough. We're playing hippy music and enjoying it if that's the case. If we're not playing what the trend is demanding up there, who gives a shit?

"But there are a lot of healthy groups up there. We meet quite a lot of them when we're down here and we're all staying in the same hotel or whatever. We've got a lot of good mates in some of these groups."

"What it revolves around," stressed Charles, "is the press up there and some of the management. It's nothing to do with the players. It's the idea that's created round it to try and make these groups something special."

"You'll be judged eventually on, hopefully, you and your music as opposed to the hipness. But, having said that, there's a lot of hip bands that are going about right now getting a lot of exposure because they're hip but most of them are shit."

Their principles are honourable but at the same time they have no misconceptions about the shameless reality that hinders them. It must be tempting to throw away your principals and go for some kind of image.

"Yeah, I suppose we've been tempted just for the sake of survival," Charles confided, "but I suppose we could be dumped just as quickly. We talk about the longevity of it rather than just a quick, hip trendy movement and it disappears after a couple of years, a couple of albums."

"We're constantly developing. Our live act has been consistent for the past four or five months. It's been, like, on a level of high entertainment. We try to maintain as well as constantly improving. I've been enjoying it, that's the main thing. We're getting better at it which I'm sure a lot of bands can't really say for themselves."

Do you have a target audience?

"That's a difficult question to answer because being the songwriters in the group it's difficult to say, 'well, this is the way we should push ourselves. This is the market we should be in.' We're a bit close to the group. What we're hoping to do is gain our own audience that appreciate us for what we are and also appreciate other groups for what they do.

"Some people have said, 'I like your music but it seems it's at sixes and sevens, you don't really know where you want to go,' and I think that's a fair comment but at the same time I think it's pretty damn good on our side because then we're right across the board and we can maybe reach a lot of people. If you listen to bands like Cream and even The Beatles for that matter, they were pop one minute and then they were bloody pure psychedelia the next minute. I mean, you could say they were a totally mixed up group."

Ever since they were first turned on to music by their mum and dad singing at Christmas parties their tastes have spread right across the board from jazz to opera, but when it comes to writing songs the only influence they feel is the spirit to drive yourself.

Jack writes the lyrics and sings them so who better to tell us what they're all about?

"Generally I suppose it's an abstract feeling about love and life but nothing too deep. Although then again it is. Ha! Ha! I'm hedging my bets here."

OK then. Try this one. What lyrical style do you favour?

"I try to have my own lyrical style but, like, one song will be a story and another will be an observation. You write the lyrics completely different. It really depends on the subject matter, what I'm trying to get across.

"There's a slight difference between us and the Red Skins. Lyrically they just go in there and go WHACK! Hit people over the head with it. No matter how hip they may be, politically they're a bit naive I think. Well, not naive. It may be a great sentiment but you can't hit people over the head with it, you really can't. I think other people do it better. I really appreciate Green out of Scritti Politti. Take Sweetest Girl. What a great song. He didn't hit anybody over the head at all. He just said what he wanted to say. It was observation and stories and things. He didn't narrow his audience like the Red Skins although a lot of people slagged him off for his political beliefs."

The new single was produced by Paulo Duffy, an interesting choice considering his record for soul music.

Charles: "We were worried about that because we're not really a soul band. There's elements of soul in the music but we're not right out there as a soul band.

"The work Duffy did was really great and convinced us in many ways. He was more interested in feel than precision. If you played a part and it wasn't exactly spot on but the feel was great, that was what he was interested in. I thought it was a great experience working with him.

"Technically I'm not a great guitar player at all. I'm pretty sloppy when it comes down to it but I can get round it. More important for me is to get across the emotion you feel in a song rather than going twiddle twiddle."

The ability to capture live feel on record is a rare gift so how did Paulo Duffy succeed where others nearly always fail?

Jack: "He'd seen us live, that was very important. In our first single we didn't have any pre-production. The producer hadn't seen us live so he didn't know what we sounded like anyway. That's one thing we insisted on this time round. We all liked to make sure we had pre-production and that the producer, whoever he may be, had seen us live. There was no going back on that, it was a sort of definite policy."

Charles' guitar playing, contrary to his modest claims, has been turning heads every time the band play and has even induced sporadic head-banging on two occasions, a memory which seems to bring him undying amusement and I'm not surprised.

The basis of the Strangers and Brothers sound lies with the bass (Brendan Moon) and drums (John Wilson) which form a tight rhythm upon which the keyboards (Andrew Alston) spread a smooth layer of icing. On top of this Jack applies occasional sprinklings of acoustic guitar and Charles' guitar is like a knife which cuts the cake open while Jack's vocals apply a rich, smooth finish. If I had to compare it to anything I'd say it was not dissimilar to the Lloyd Cole and The Commotions cake except you have to eat this one a bit faster.

"I'm bothered about the sound," said Charles when I questioned him on the relevance of technicality. "I'll use whatever it takes to give me the sound that I enjoy. I use a telecaster custom with a built-in pre-amp on it and I've also got a Moon guitar. Brendan's brother makes guitars for Big Country, Simple Minds and that sort of stuff. He's a fantastic guitar maker and I've got his very first guitar but I certainly hope to try and get one of his newer ones because they're fantastic. They're hand-made for a start. They're quite precise in the way they're made, excellent pickups, dead responsive. The telecaster I've got is really old. It's a good player but it's full of old parts.

"I don't use it a lot but I've got this Fender London reverb. It's an amp top and a speaker cabinet. I find that really versatile because you can have the amp in the control room with the speakers in another room."

In the beginning it was Jack on lead guitar and Charles on bass. Then one fateful day their guitars were stolen and Jack was left with just an acoustic.

"Acoustic was the only guitar I had left. Charles moved onto electric guitar and he's far better than I am, it really makes sense. It helped me. I don't play that much so I concentrate on singing. It's a nice contrast the acoustic. It's part of our sound. I might not use it that much but it's still there.

"I've got a transducing pickup which fits under the bridge and it's great but I can't find an amp to go with it. If I didn't have the transducing pickup on it, just a mike stuck in front of the guitar I'd probably get a good sound from it because it's a very loud acoustic but it would be hopeless for live because I'd never be in front of the mike.

"I like the studio, you know, because for a start you can play their instruments but other than that it's the sound you can get.

"When we were in Jacobs we had a party in the control room, blasting out Kiss — the Prince song that is — and Big Audio Dynamite."

"Getting down to the Medicine Show."

"Here we go lads. Get another can. Whoah!"

New wave or no wave, Strangers and Brothers seem to be enjoying themselves and giving a lot of people a good night out. If the new single brings them the recognition they deserve, they won't be strangers for long.