If celebrated vocalist Kirstie MacColl was your aunt, singer-songwriter Ewan MacColl was your grandfather and American folk legend Peggy Seeger was your grandma, it would be a travesty, surely, not to follow in their musical footsteps.

Indeed, if your friend’s father was classical cellist Rohan de Saram, you’d be tempted, wouldn’t you, to club together, to start a band?

Perhaps it’s not surprising then, that with such strong musical lineage, that’s exactly what Jack Steadman, Jamie MacColl and Suren de Saram did at the age of 15, after a teacher put them together for an assembly concert at their school in Hampstead.

Bassist Ed Nash joined as a later addition in the summer of 2006.

And so Indie rock band Bombay Bicycle Club was born, named after the chain of Indian restaurants – but more pointedly the eaterie they used to walk past on the way to classes.

A win at Virgin Mobile’s Road to V competition on Channel 4 followed, as did two albums, but Bombay Bicycle Club’s real breakthrough came with their 2011 album A Different Kind of Fix.

Epic and stacked with anthemic choruses, it made the top ten here and saw the quartet graduating to arena-scale audiences. Now, after a hiatus of two years, they are about to release a follow-up, So Long, See You Tomorrow and the buzz surrounding it is palpable.

There’s also a four-month worldwide tour to promote the album, with a UK date in Brixton.

“There is a lot of hype around it, but hopefully, that’s because it’s good,“ chuckles Jamie, 23. “I definitely think it’s our best album, it is the most inventive thing we have done, and it’s got the strongest songs – even though some of the sounds are rather experimental, a lot of the songs are quite direct and hint at being proper pop songs for the first time.

“The most obvious inspiration was Jack, the main songwriter’s trip to India. He was listening to a lot of Bollywood, which is an obvious sound on the record, but a lot of people have mistaken it for Middle Eastern.

“So a lot of it was his trip... although a lot was written in our Edgware Road studio in London, which isn’t the most inspirational place. I like to think it’s because we’ve got better at our craft, we’re all still in our early 20s, so this has been a learning process for us to get to this point, to make a record we are proud of.“

Jamie’s right about their new album; it is more experimental than anything this gifted group has done yet, synthesiser-lead with loops sampled from music around the world. Interestingly the whole album is unified by a loop; the melody of the final song picks up that of the opener – part of the album’s overarching theme of continuity.

The cyclical theme is echoed in the record’s art too, featuring the work of groundbreaking 19th Century photographer Eadweard Muybridge, a pioneer in the field of stop-motion photography and animation.

“We hadn’t made a conscious decision to incorporate loops when we started making the album, it just happened that way. Similarly the fact we’ve been inspired by Bollywood has nothing to do with our name... it’s just a coincidence,“ he says.

“But considering the way we made this album, it was the first time we’d self-produced something, it went relatively smoothly.

“I thought there was going to be a lot of tension, internally, because we were having to be quite critical about Jack’s songwriting, because we didn’t have a producer or any outside input, we were having to be really quite brutal, cutting songs to make them as good as possible.“

The band has come a long way since forming nine years ago. Starting out, it seemed unlikely Bombay Bicycle Club would achieve mainstream popularity – as Jamie says: "we’ve got a silly name and our sound was somewhat generic." They also faced the possibility of being pigeon-holed as "just another Indie band", destined to fade into obscurity.
Yet, they continue to go from strength to strength, with a loyal legion of fans – Jamie himself has what only can be described as disciples:  "They call themselves the McCollers, they’ve dedicated a Tumblr to me, they call me Jesus McChrist, and spend their time putting my face on pictures of Jesus."
And it’s refreshing to find that they’re not afraid to speak their minds. Last week, bassist Ed Nash controversially claimed the rise of the Arctic Monkeys had resulted in dodgy copycats, today Jamie raises concerns as to how bands such as The 1975 and Bastille are successful – "It’s inexplicable, they’re just dull, there’s not much depth to be honest."

So what does the future hold for Bombay Bicycle Club?

“I hope we’ll just continue performing together as a group, making great music,“ Jamie laughs.

“It’s funny, it’s not how I thought life would turn out. At the moment I’m doing an Open University course (social sciences) so that I have something intellectual to go with the whole band thing.

“But I never felt any pressure to enter the music industry, quite the opposite. Even given my lineage, it was just something I ended up falling into. It’s not very romantic is it?“

l Bombay Bicycle Club are at Brixton Academy, Stockwell Road, SW9 March 13.

Details: o2academy brixton.co.uk, 020 7771 3000. So Long See You Tomorrow is out now.