The chic geek appearance of Tellison is about a lot more than style. They have been through university, and came out the other end a stronger band than before. Chris Price spoke to them.

Given the nightmares they have had to endure, it is appropriate Tellison kick off a Halloween Weekender in the county this weekend.

One of the most talked-about new Indie bands, they released their debut album Contact! Contact! shortly before they went to university in 2007 and consequently found they were unable to promote it properly.

The four-piece could have just thrown in the towel and started new projects at different universities. But Tellison have never done things the easy way.

Lead vocalist and guitarist Stephen Davidson said: "There was a lot of picking people up and doing coursework in the back of the van on the motorway.

"It is not everyone's experience of uni, but that's how we played it. We would either run away without telling our teachers or do shows in the holidays. We did a lot considering the restrictions we placed on ourselves, but it was always quite difficult."

Stephen studied English at Cambridge, while Andrew Tickell went to the Canterbury Christ Church University, Peter Phillips went to Oxford and Henry Danowski went to Berkeley in the US. The current line-up has been together since 2005, and they toured with Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly in their early years. These days they headline their own tours, the latest of which finishes in Kent.

Stephen said: "A lot of people don't know how to receive us. We can go somewhere and someone will say 'I can't believe you guys are still going' but then some people have never heard of us, which is kind of our own fault."

The current tour is to promote the single Edith, which is about Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist Edith Wharton. Stephen said: "I wrote the song in 15 minutes after I finished reading Wharton's the Age of Innocence. The whole thing just fell out fully formed.

"It was something to do with the age I was at when I wrote the song. You spend your whole young life making sure you do well so you can go to university, then you are issued out with the whole wide world open to you and there is a lot less structure. That is often what leads you to feeling dissatisfied.

"People's real lives are not as exciting or compelling as the one in made-up stuff. A lot of people at the moment are feeling down and people's obsessions with celebrity and success is a good opportunity to escape. But most people's lives are not like that."

The new album The Wages of Fear was recorded a year ago.

Stephen said: "Our first album was very wide-eyed and positive but this one was made after a couple of years of being screwed over by agents, promoters and record labels. This record comes from a place where we were questioning why we were doing it."

Fans heading to Tunbridge Wells Forum could be in for a ghastly Halloween surprise when Tellison take to the stage. Stephen said: "Maybe we could be like Metallica and fake someone's death on stage."

Tellison will perform at Tunbridge Wells Forum on Saturday, October 29.