Ever since forming via the well-practiced route of an Edinburgh Art School ‘Musicians Wanted’ ad, Come On Gang! have been fizzing around the city like over-exciteable Andrex labradors and generally picking up friends along the way. With a couple of singles under their belt – ‘Wheels’ and ‘Start The Sound’ – another (a free download, zeitgeist-watchers, as well as a physical 7″) in the shape of ‘Fortune Favours The Brave’ on the way from 10th Sept, a full-length release slated for October-ish, plus a juicy tour over the coming month or so that ends up at In The City in Manchester next month, they’ve got plenty going on at the moment, to boot. As good a time as any to catch up then, I reckon.

They’re a bit of a strange mix, this lot. There’s guitarist Mikey, easygoing and funny, bassist (and singer-songwriter in his own right) Rob, all testosterone and belly-laughs, and Sarah, a mass of contradiction, switching from tough-as-nails to girly and giggly in the same sentence, and who sings like a chorister but drums like six blokes. Not the most obvious choice of bandmates, especially given that they’d never met each other at the start.

“We got together out of a good old fashioned want and need to play music I guess, and we stayed together after writing six or seven songs in a couple of weeks for our first ever gig, only to realise that they weren’t shit – two or three of them we still play today”, says Mikey.

Which, for me anyway, is as good an explanation as any as to why the songs don’t neatly fit into the usual boxes. Sure, most are a bit fast, most are pretty poppy, and there’s bagfuls of energy and joy to spare, but the Art School Wanker-ometer influence is kept fairly low, and there’s a variety in there that is sometimes regretably absent when groups of friends form bands together.

“We sound like we do because it’s just what happens when we get together”, says Sarah, “it’s not really planned, and we don’t have an agenda like ‘alright guys, we want to channel 1950s Hawaii in this song’. I mean, of course our music is layered by our influences but they’re not overtly out there. We all want our songs to be energetic and fun. Sometimes they’re more dramatic, some of them sound more punk and a couple are light-hearted pieces of danceability.”

Rob agrees: “I listen to loads of different musicians and bands, but you probably can’t hear much of their influence in our music. The first artist that really opened my eyes beyond acoustic singer-songwriter stuff was The Postal Service, and we couldn’t sound more different to them. I think we do a pretty good job of sounding quite different to all our individual influences – which is just how I like it.”

“I think we started off trying to write the songs we wanted to hear on a night out”, says Mikey, “and from there we’ve probably developed into a little bit of evening and early-morning listening too. I know we get given the ‘pop’ tag a lot,which is cool, but a lot of the stuff we play isn’t particularly upbeat to me.”

Starting off by writing the soundtrack to a night out is – to me – a knockout statement of intent, but it’s the vaguely bemused surprise at the pop tag that’s interesting. For a band that – live, anyway – postively foam at the mouth with melody and hooks and rhythm, it’s odd that they don’t set out to write ‘pop’ songs, they just turn out that way – given they don’t plan to sound the way they do, it must come from somewhere internal, and personal. For example, Mikey says that “the city’s probably the biggest influence” on the songs, Sarah talks about being surrounded by music growing up and being obsessed with Abba while her friends were into Take That, and Rob claims that any song they write “has to be something that I want to listen to, and something that I enjoy playing. While the second part sounds massively selfish, it’s a healthy kind of selfishness – when you enjoy playing something, you get more enthusiastic about it”.

This isn’t – clearly – a band trying to wite something fashionable, this is a band putting together songs that sound and feel like they do themselves. That said, Rob’s also pretty clear about why he got into music in the first place, cheerfully admitting that “when I was growing up, I played a lot of music, and I did a lot of computer programming. In my late teens, I realised that one of these two activities would help in my pursuit of the fairer sex. It wasn’t programming.”

It’s not easy though, this music lark, and since you, dear reader, are struggling through all this via a modem of some kind, a lot of that is your fault, according to most music indutry types. Come On Gang!, though, mostly love the fact that the internet has changed the way bands work for ever.

“It’s certainly different these days, and I think there are good and bad elements to it. For example, there’s a lot more music available out there to find at the click of a few buttons – music you don’t have to trek through record shop dust to get to, or that’s half recorded in terrible quality off the radio. It’s wonderfully convenient and it zaps a lot of colour into life. But it might mean that record shop dust might be out of your life forever, and there’s no fragrance quite the same as clapped-out old vinyl. We love the increased interaction of people with the band, though, and I think Rob’s into technology or something, so he’s happy.”

“I love the idea that a band can write a song, record it, then have people listen to it within 24 hours,” agrees Rob. “And there’s still a lot of scope for things to move more in that direction. People make a lot of noise about the death of the music industry, but that’s nonsense, it’s just changing – in terms of overall profit, the music industry is much healthier than most! As a band, you have to choose how you want to deal with the changes: you can complain about it, or you can see all the new opportunities and embrace them. The level of fan interaction these days is incredible, and I think it’s great for bands and fans alike. Change is good.”

Mikey’s a bit more pragmatic though – “I really think from a musician or band’s perspective, nothing should’ve changed too much, as they’ve always had to work hard. Every industry changes every five years, so it’s counterproductive to whine about the music industry shifting gear so much. I’m quite a purist really, all I care about is putting on good shows, writing good songs and making good albums, and rest of the stuff is the grease to make that wheel turn. Back in the day bands had to go round venues trying to play the managers their demo tapes, so in many ways it’s far easier these days. People can access your music however they want, but it’s worth bearing in mind that someone could download and love your entire back catalogue, but unless they support the band in some way, they’re not a fan; they’re just a listener.”

I suggest their lack of oafish arrogance, an absence of indier-than-thou snobbery and general all-round cheeriness springs from coming up in Edinburgh instead of an arguably tougher music landscape such as Glasgow, Manchester or London.

“I’ve not lived in another city while in a band, so I don’t really know about others, plus it’s a bit of a cliche here I know, but it’s true”, says Sarah, “there’s a real community spirit in Edinburgh…”

“…if not a common musical thread”, adds Mikey.

“I was listening to Huw Stephens the other night”, continues Rob, warming to the theme, “and he told a story about meeting some band from Brooklyn and saying how with all the Brooklyn bands that were around at the time, he’d imagined Brooklyn as one endless show, with bands on every corner all high-fiving each other as they walked around the neghbourhood. The band replied that they hardly knew any other bands in Brooklyn, and neither did many of the others, that Brooklyn wasn’t really a scene of itself, but just a pretty cool place that a lot of bands lived in. Edinburgh’s a lot more like that though, most bands know each other and are actually friends.”

“It’s easy to get noticed quickly in Edinburgh”, agrees Mikey, “but you’ve got to work really hard all the time – because there are fewer bands, you can’t just drop in and out, which you can do to a certain extent in larger cities since there are so many other bands to fill in the gaps. There are less places to hide here, which is a good thing”.

I finally have to leave at this point, but again I notice that I’m most often struck by just how likeable they are, musically and personally. If they were the new kids in school, you’d instantly be friends with them; if they were your aunt, they’d be the cool one who slipped you cigarettes and lent you her driving license; if they were your younger brother, you’d be gutted because all your friends fancied them.

The songs may well be smashed together like a chaotic night on the tiles, they may not be the coolest gang in town, and they may well not be entirely clear on what is going on a lot of the time, but as Sarah says to anyone who hates them for any of these reasons,  “if you’re predisposed to hate, then that’s your business. Personally I think hating stuff takes up too much energy. No one is allowed to hate sequins, though”.

Which is just about right – the haters, the music snobs and the glory-hunters can stand silently at the back of a different gig, look for faults and failings, write it all down on the fucking internet, and generally have less fun. Meanwhile, we’ll all go out dancing, and Come On Gang! will be up on stage instead – not the brightest internet stars in Edinburgh, and not the brashest personalities, but a dazzling pinprick of light on the noisy fabric of the city, a glittering sequin on Edinburgh’s party frock.

Come On Gang! are having a single launch in Edinburgh this Friday 10th September at The Caves in celebration of their new release ‘Fortune Favours The Brave’. FOUND and Jesus H Foxx are playing too, which makes it just about the perfect line-up for me. They’ll then head off on the rest of their tour around various parts of the UK, the dates for which are on their myspace.