EVERY generation produces bands that divide critical and public opinion down the middle and, with the exception perhaps of Coldplay, nobody has carried that torch higher in the last decade or so than Snow Patrol.
The often-maligned indie ensemble lay no claim to be boundary pushers, but their status as million record sellers suggests they are doing something very right.
The band's biggest hit, Chasing Cars, stayed in the UK charts a marathon 85 weeks, out-
selling big-hitters Coldplay and Radiohead across the pond. It was also named the best song of all time by Virgin Radio listeners.
An even more remarkable statistic, however, is that their album Eyes Open, sold more in the UK in 2006 than Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits sold in 1985 or True Blue by Madonna sold in 1986. In the age of the digital download, to sell more units than two hit-packed albums that were in heavy rotation at MTV in the days when fans actually forked out money for music is an impressive feat.
By any measure you care to make, then, Snow Patrol – having gone from no-selling indie workhorses in their early years to million-selling mainstream thoroughbreds in recent years – have become massive.
The band's Bangor-born lead singer Gary Lightbody admitted at the start of their record-breaking gig at Meadowbank Stadium in 2006 that that was their "biggest in Scotland by a mile", but the upbeat Irishman is every bit looking forward to making a low-key Capital return on Monday lunchtime.
This time around, the band have selected the considerably smaller Assembly Hall on The Mound, giving fans the chance to witness the first live play of soon-to-be-released new album, A Hundred Million Suns, in intimate surroundings.
"This is our most complete record by far," explains Lightbody. "A Hundred Million Suns sounds like the marriage of everything we learned from the Jeepster years and the Fiction years made into something new and bolder.
"Our spikiness and our indieness are coming through again with all the poppiness of the last two records," continues the 32-year-old. "There's a lot of melody here and you can't cloak that whatever you do with it.
"This album is touched by our entire history and hopefully sounds like our future, too."
As you'd expect from a band whose last album sold 4.5 million copies worldwide and helped them break America, there could be pressure to repeat that level of success when A Hundred Million Suns is released a week on Monday.
Be that as it may, though, Lightbody says the group made efforts not to remake their hit songs.
"We've tried not to repeat ourselves, but the basic elements of what makes Snow Patrol - melody and honesty - are still there in force," he says. "It's a much more positive record, it's a record about love and the universe, rather than the break-up of a relationship."
So what happened to make it so? "I just feel more comfortable in my own skin and I'm a lot more positive in my outlook," he says.
"I was dwelling on the past and beating myself up about stuff, trying to work out what I was doing wrong.
"Now I'm a lot more relaxed and more able to think about the way things went right, rather than the way they went wrong," he adds.
As for the pressure to write another mega-hit like Chasing Cars, Lightbody says: "People find you out pretty fast if you keep repeating yourself.
"The only thing we really knew we had to avoid was to make another record like we did the last time. I'm glad that it never happened too early for me because it would have been well over by now.
"But aside from that, it was open to anything. We had to push ourselves further than we'd ever done before.
"We tried every available instrument and approach. From various levels of water in wine glasses to setting stuff on fire. It's important to love your instrument, but it's also important to set it on fire." So were the band ever tempted to do a Radiohead and react against their success? "We didn't want to spite ourselves - that's just ridiculous," says Lightbody. "But we neutralised it by going to Ireland.
"We got a little house by a lake, set up our instruments in our living room, cooked dinner for each other every night and got back to the bare bones of being in a band, which is essentially five guys and their instruments.
"We developed again right from the beginning. That's the way you change tack and avoid repeating yourself and keep the freshness – by trying to treat every album as a new start."
By taking music lessons? "Yes – and I know what you're thinking – it's about time," laughs Lightbody.
"We all wanted to meet our ambitions. We wanted to be better as a band and as individuals. Everybody learned to play their instruments a lot better and it's really paid off because we were that much sharper, and that much better." The lead single from the album, Take Back The City, was inspired by the singer's love of Belfast.
"I'm a Bangor man, but I've always considered Belfast my city," he says. "I went to school in Belfast, I've had some great nights out in Belfast and it's affected my view of every other city in the world.
"Take Back The City is a happy, positive song, inspired by Belfast. It's a great time to be from Northern Ireland and the song is something of a celebration, a rough-edged homage to a rough-edged city, as are all the cities I love in the world."
With a big tour planned for early next year, Lightbody says the band insisted upon the up-coming two-day capital cities tour, which brings them to Edinburgh next week.
"People who got the tickets are people in the fan clubs in the various cities we're playing in," he says. "Hopefully, if the demand is there, then we'll do the bigger gigs next year."
