It is appropriate that I should meet Chris Thomson for coffee in a bar on the edge of Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow. Appropriate because the latest album from the Bathers is titled ‘Kelvingrove Baby’, and is scattered with references to the stylish west end of the city. The influence of his home city has been evident on previous Bathers albums with mentions here and there but this is the first time it has made it into the title.

The album has had very favourable reviews in the British music press (Q magazine, Mojo and Vox) and in issue 11 of the Bagpiper, and I asked Chris whether this had translated into more commercial success.

"So far, yes. It is the best selling thing that we’ve done on Marina, and I think it is probably the best selling Bathers album thus far. It’s hard to put your finger on it but it’s obviously still very distinctively a Bathers album. I think the reviews have reflected that: it is still somehow the same but maybe we’ve introduced some of the pop sensibility of some of the earlier records, and even from Friends Again".

More about Friends Again and Marina later. With ‘Kelvingrove Baby’ The Bathers have delivered another collection of emotionally charged, delicately crafted songs which are straight from the heart. Whilst still recognisably in the style of what had gone before, the songs are more accessible for a first time listener, giving an excellent introduction to the music. But the sound is not the same across the album, something Chris recognises.

"There is such a contrast between certain tracks. Something like ‘No Risk, No Glory’ is really quite far away from ‘The Fragrance Remains Insane’. Quite a contrast but somehow it all seemed to flow together quite well on this album."

It is not only on record that the songs come together to form a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts. In the spring the Bathers played a number of Scottish concerts, including sell out shows at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow and the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh. Speaking about the Edinburgh gig, the critic from ‘The Scotsman’, one of Scotland’s national quality daily newspapers, described the event as "something truly stirring". And the audience did greet the performance enthusiastically; they clearly had been touched by the music.

"Something like that ‘Scotsman’ review was nice because I believe that the reviewer had never actually heard our music before she came to the concert. Maybe she had some preconceptions but she just listened to the show. Essentially it’s quite romantic music and you are trying to stir people’s emotions. Not to knock happy sing-a-long music - there’s a place for that as well - but what we’re striving to do, and what the strength of the music is, is to try and be uplifting or move people. To make an emotional connection."

That connection is helped greatly by the choice of an appropriate venue. It is no mistake that recently the Bathers have chosen to play in theatres. The intimacy of spaces more used to picking up the nuances of the actor’s craft are perfect for allowing audiences to appreciate some of the band’s more delicate moments.

"I realise that now more than ever before and have been very, very careful where we play, trying to stick to nice theatrical venues where the quiet sections will work."

The band return to Glasgow’s Tron Theatre at the end of October for a couple of nights with a show called ‘Wings of Desire’. This will feature a set by the Bathers and songs from Jerry Burns, once described as the Pink Nile, her single from the early 1990s ‘Pale Red’ received a fair bit of radio play at the time. This will be followed by three songs from ‘Sunpowder’ with dancers from Scottish Ballet. Chris is looking forward to the event.

"It’s really quite intriguing. It will be the first time that I have sung with dancers on stage. I think it’s exciting to mix the mediums as it were."

However, in terms of playing live, the best venue in his view so far was in Spain.

"We were there last September for a festival which Belle and Sebastian are playing this year. It was fabulous, absolutely brilliant, to get the band in front of fifteen hundred people in Barcelona, outdoors, in a Gothic square. It looked a little bit like the cover of ‘Lagoon Blues’ [the third Bathers album]. It was that kind of atmosphere. And it had beautiful acoustics - the square was almost totally enclosed but it had no roof and very good natural acoustics. The perfect Bathers venue. We won a lot of people over."

The festival in Barcelona is for new bands. It may be somewhat ironic that the Bathers played there in 1996 - some fourteen years after Chris began his musical career in the Glasgow band Friends Again, where he was the main vocalist and songwriter. The band split when Chris and fellow member James Grant found it difficult to share the limelight. Grant went on to form Love and Money. Happily, they have worked together since then with James Grant playing on some songs on Bathers albums and the two of them doing a series of acoustic concerts at Glasgow’s Mayfest festival in 1996. Friends Again only released one album, ‘Trapped and Unwrapped’, in 1984 (now very difficult to get hold of but highly recommended) and it displayed a pop potential which was never fully realised.

Following the break up of Friends Again Chris formed the Bathers and their first album, ‘Unusual Places to Die’, was released in 1989 on the Go!Discs label. This was not a great commercial success and the band were dropped by their record company. Three years later the second album, ‘Sweet Deceit’, was released on the Island label in a limited edition of 10,000. This was followed by a musical interlude with Neil Clark and Stephen Irvine, formerly with Lloyd Cole’s Commotions, as Bloomsday, which saw one album, ‘Fortuny’, released also on Island.

"Looking back ‘Fortuny’ didn’t sit at all well as a package. There are three or four quite good songs where we all did just enough. It was a big corporate album, it was well produced and well played. Neil is a brilliant guitarist, he made a great contribution to Lagoon Blues. But it just didn’t have that critical kind of vision thing that the best Bathers records have always had."

The Bloomsday collaboration did not result in the sort of success Island were looking for and once again Chris Thomson found himself without a label. ‘Lagoon Blues’ was the next album from the Bathers, released three years later on the German label Marina. This association may at first sight seem a bit strange, but the story began when two German journalists interviewed Bloomsday in London.

"They came over ostensibly to do Bloomsday. They were major, major fans of ‘Sweet Deceit’ and Friends Again and the first Bathers album. And then about a year later after I had been dropped by Island I saw something about a German label looking for Scottish talent and it rang a bell that it could be these same guys. I wrote to them and they wanted to get in touch, so we met up and I played them a few demos. They loved it and wanted to be involved and everything fell into place for ‘Lagoon Blues’ so easily."

In 1995 the band’s fourth album, ‘Sunpowder’, was released, also on the Marina label. Chris was accompanied on several songs by Liz Fraser of the Cocteau Twins, bringing her distinctive vocal style to the music. And this year the fifth Bathers album, ‘Kelvingrove Baby’ was released.

The sound of the Bathers is difficult to sum up in a few words. Over the years and across all the albums the music ranges from the simplicity of Chris and just piano to the sound of the full band, with many styles in between involving strings, accordion and hammond organ to name but a few. Music that has been influenced by a wide variety of different artists.

"I think the things I grew up listening to, like punk, were never locked too much in any one style. However crude a lot of the actual punk music was, the attitude was you could do anything. Listening to various people including the Velvet Underground, Bowie, Iggy Pop and the whole Postcard scene in Glasgow it was really anything goes, especially someone like Bowie: the songwriting was the most important thing. You adapted the style to suit the song rather than being ‘we’re a heavy metal band’ or ‘we’re a reggae band’. I’ve never really felt that it’s a good thing to be stuck in a genre of music. We’ve established a sort of style of our own but looking within that I’d like to say there a lot of pop sensibility, but then there’s the orchestral sound, some of which I think is very unpoppy in a way."

One of the unfortunate consequences of the lack of a recognisable tag is that the Bathers are virtually ignored by radio stations. This means that often it is only word of mouth that pulls in new fans. And once they fall in love with the music, it tends to become a passion, according to Chris.

"People either leave it alone or they get behind it, which is nice. I’d rather that than be seen as very average. Whether they love it or hate it, that’s better than being indifferent or lukewarm. I have to be fair, the reviews we’ve had have generally been very good."

While critical acclaim is obviously pleasing, for Chris the music is the most important thing.

"The music is there to be listened to. It’s good to write about it but at the end of the day it would be pretty boring music if you could just pigeon-hole it. Of course people will always try and sum things up in a cliched phrase. That’s understandable, you’ve got to have some point of reference."

For Chris, getting the mood of the performance or the album just right is an important part of the creative process. And that extends far beyond the arrangements. Recently that vision has been shared by the record company as well.

"With Marina the small details are important and that’s reflected right through to their artwork, and the actual feedback you get from them regarding mixes and running orders is very well tuned in."

Occasionally described as a perfectionist, Chris does look back with just a hint of how things might have been done better with the ‘Sunpowder’ album.

"In a way, something isn’t satisfying about the way that album hangs together. It is the least successful of the running orders. Although, song wise it has got things as good as anything I’ve done."

And evidence of that came forcefully in the live setting where ‘Send Me Your Halo’ was one of the highlights of the recent concerts, performed with such energy and feeling that it gave the listener a new perspective on the song, putting it up there among the best of the Bathers musical output.

The Bathers may not be the most popular band in Scotland but Chris is happy to produce the music he wants to and, if things go to plan, fans can look forward to new material next year. He aims to write and record another album over the winter, for release towards the end of next summer. And with a supportive record label, the business side of making the record does not worry Chris.

"I think we’ve a nice little niche, but there’s a lot more room to go but we’re going in the right direction at quite a manageable pace. If we can keep producing the music of a similar quality, I don’t really have any fears. The thing with Marina has worked out so well, it seems to be going so nicely."

With these optimistic views for the future, it is interesting to look back only a few years to 1993 when to accompany a BBC Radio 1 series about Scottish music Brian Hogg wrote a book called ‘The History of Scottish Rock and Pop: All That Ever Mattered’. With hindsight it is easy to criticise anything frozen at a particular moment in time, and forecasters are always easy targets, but the Scottish scene has probably not evolved in the way Hogg suggested it would. Chris stated: "The timing of his book was a little bit unfortunate in that it reads as if the Bathers were a footnote to the Scottish music scene. In fact I would argue that we’ve surpassed much of what was rated as the main chapter features. Even if we’ve never matched some of their sales, I think if people look back, we would be up there with the important things like the Blue Niles and the Liz Frasers of the Scottish scene. The people that really made a unique statement, an individual contribution. I think the Bathers output is up there with that."

If the book is ever updated, or if someone gets round to writing the next chapter, Chris Thomson’s place is assured.