Could Twin Atlantic be the saviours of British rock music?

The excellently named Sam McTrusty – Twin Atlantic’s guitarist and lead singer – thinks so.

“Rock music is the voice of the people.

"When someone writes an amazing song that transcends age, it’s because they’re talking about something that is important and I think that’s what’s lacking from young British rock bands,” he says.

“I am going to be arrogant and ballsy here and say that’s what our band has. I think there are songs on [debut full-length album] Free that are good enough, but I think everyone has blinkers on right now when it comes to the genre.”

It’s a bold statement from the Scottish singer, but one can’t but help admire his tenacity.

“I can only be honest with you. I genuinely believe that young British people who like rock music are a bit lost with the whole ‘scene’ element of it at the moment,” he continues.

“A lot of people look at rock music and think its really uncool right now, but it’s kinda the coolest type of music to be a part of because its got that ‘f*** you’ attitude.

"It makes you question everything, and that’s a great way to be. I don’t necessarily think [British guitar music] is dead, I think it’s lost its balls.”

If the band are here to save our guitar solos, they’ve certainly started well. Their 2007 mini-album Vivarium ushered in the band’s brand of anthemic, hook-laden melodic rock with a speed that left audiences captivated, landing them American tours and support slots with big-hitters Blink-182, My Chemical Romance and The Smashing Pumpkins.

“It was Blink-182 that pretty much made me play guitar when I was a wee skater guy.

"It’s weird managing a crowd that size. It feels like you’re in a dream, and I know that sounds kinda cheesy because it has been our dream to do something like that, but it felt like a weird video game or something,” laughs McTrusty.

“I think it’s an inherent thing with Scottish people, we don’t really think of ourselves as cool. Then, when you get over to the States, just because you’ve got a Scottish accent, straight away you’ve got, like, 100 cool points. It’s weird. I think after the first song at our first ever show in America someone at the back shouted ‘F****** Braveheart!’”

Their 2011 album Free expands on Vivarium’s fist-pumping, mosh-pit sound – up-scaling it from a club circuit band with big ideas to arena-level grandeur.

“We’re fans of a good song. I think what that means is having a hook and a catchy element. It’s funny because we don’t really listen to stadium rock – we listen to all kinds of music but we wouldn’t choose to listen to U2 or Bon Jovi,” McTrusty says.

“It’s weird, I’m not really sure how we ended up doing it. We wanted our songs to impact people and I think the most natural high-impact thing is big rock chords, so it kinda came about that way. We listen to more aggressive stuff and much softer stuff, but we’re somewhere in the middle.”

Of all the big-name artists they’ve performed alongside, it’s The Gaslight Anthem and fellow Scots Biffy Clyro that McTrusty feels most connection with. The former for their shared love of The Boss (“I have a Bruce Springsteen lyric tattooed on my arm. My dad used to listen to him loads and I used to think it was really s***... then something clicked in my head”); and the latter because their name always seems to crop up in every interview McTrusty does (“They’re like our mentors… I don’t think they’d be happy with me saying that. It wasn’t accepted that you could be from Scotland and be a cool rock band before Biffy”).

That’s not to say McTrusty is happy to be pigeon-holed in a rock elite. The inherent message in Free is to be just that – the decisions the band made following Vivarium’s release made them feel trapped, puppets to the whims of the music industry machine.

“We were in the position of having a record deal, and there’s like thousands of bands who would kill to be in the position we were in, so we wanted to make the best of it. But we were almost like too grateful and went through a sickly, try-hard period for a year or two,” he explains.

“I think that resulted in us doing some things that we wouldn’t have actually done if we’d had clear vision. We probably made decisions based on our ambition and excitement, rather than what we thought was good.

“We never wanted to be part of a scene, we’re fans of music in general, but slowly we were becoming part of one and we went with it, rather than standing our ground. Free is exactly what we wanted to do from the start – it’s a poignant experience.”

* Twin Atlantic play The Haunt, Pool Valley, Brighton on Nov 30, 7pm, £8 adv. Tickets available from Resident (01273 606312) and Rounder Records (01273 325440).