Tom Petty once declared, "If a group like The Zombies appeared now they'd own the world".

The world has an opportunity to test this theory as singer Colin Blunstone and songwriter Rod Argent have reunited under the moniker for the first time since 1967.

When their signature track Time Of The Season became a million-selling hit in 1968, The Zombies had already decided to call it a day. The London office where Blunstone had taken work as an insurance clerk was besieged with phone calls asking him to reform the band but the group were adamant Odessey And Oracle, their second album and a Sixties classic, was to be their last.

Thus The Zombies became the only band who, having an acclaimed album with a number one single, didn't go out and play them. And thus Blunstone and Argent, deciding to reform 40 years later, became the only rock stars to find themselves in the position of teaching themselves to play their own hits. As Blunstone puts it, "We've always done things a bit strangely".

Remembered for a cluster of sweetly melodic and inventively arranged hits such as She's Not There and Tell Her No, The Zombies are often thought of as heroes of the hippy era, with Vanity Fair recently voting Odessey And Oracle "the defining pop album of the Sixties". In fact, the album was recorded prior to the summer of '67 while, as Blunstone observes, "the late Sixties are thought of as drug-fuelled days but we had absolutely nothing to do with that side of life."

Fronted by an excessively polite, softly spoken man called Colin who recalls, in slightly awed tones, the creative return of those early coffee breaks, The Zombies were never the hippest of outfits. But their image also suffered from their rather premature success.

"We'd literally just got out of school," explains Blunstone. "Nowadays a lot of money would be spent on image and photography. Our first photo session still follows us around now and it's dreadful, atrocious. It seems like nit-picking to talk about something like that after all this time but photos of a band form the public's perception.

"We had these sort of little waistcoat numbers which looked pretty grim and two of the guys in the band had very thick black glasses. People want you to be a bit wild and rebellious whereas our original biographies were written about schoolboys. After a couple of years on the road we'd had a few of those edges knocked off us."

Since ending up back on stage together three years ago "by a series of coincidences which we both remember differently", Blunstone and Argent have released three albums, including a recording of their concert at London's Bloomsbury Theatre. Their current shows include the pick of Blunstone's solo career and Argent's various interim projects, as well as Zombies material old and new.

"Immediately it seemed as though we'd been playing together just a few weeks before - instead of 20 years before," says Blunstone. "I think it's because we grew up together muscially - Rod learnt how to write songs with my voice in his mind and to some extent I learnt how to sing singing his songs.

"In many ways this isn't The Zombies," he continues, "because there were five of us. But when me and Rod turn up together that's how people think of us. In some ways I find it quite bizarre because The Zombies finished in 1967 - Rod and I have been playing together longer in this incarnation than we ever played as The Zombies."

Starts at 7.30pm. Tickets cost £17.50/£15.50, call 01273 736222