Irvine rock veterans Spleen will be celebrating a special anniversary as the band will mark 20 years together.

Spleen will mark the milestone in Irvine’s Harbour Arts Centre, which will include support from Bosphorus and Colin Hunter.

Formed in 1997, the band features Paul Boyd on guitar/ vocals, bassist Brian Dillon and Scott Boyd on drums.

Scott Boyd said: “I’m starting to get quite excited about it.

“Were hopefully going to get another wee tune recorded as well – so we’ll have at least one new song.

“We’ve got a gig a couple of weeks before supporting Culann at their album launch so that will be a good wee warm up for us.

“I suppose not a lot of bands in the same line-ups can say they’ve been going for 20 years.

“We were rehearsing last week again and it’s still as great a laugh as ever. We still click, we’re just older and more crabbit.

“We do tend to annoy each other, but we know where we stand. There’s a good dynamic of if one of us starts to get a wee bit techy we’ll wind them down.

“We all have our moments especially with Paul and I being brothers, and Brian quells the fire between us.

“It’s just always been about having a good laugh and not taking yourself too seriously and just trying to make good music and getting along with one another. I don’t think there’s any secret to it really, but it’s worked and we’re not trying to fix anything that’s no broken. We’ve just always got along as three guys.

“There was a precursor to the present line up and we were actually a fivepiece but that kind of fell by the waist-side with work commitments.

“It was only Paul and I left and we advertised for a bass player and Brian agreed to come along. We started jamming and it just instantly clicked. We thought this guys a great player and it just blossomed from there.

“Brian liked the tunes we were writing, he was into his early nineties acid jazz but liked the rock thing we were doing and it’s been great ever since. He adds a great dynamic to that as well.

“We all have our separate music tastes in what we like but it just seems to work together.

“I’ve always found us hard to describe. A lot of people have compared us to grunge, and it’s certainly of that thing.

“Some people have compared us to stoner rock, but we were never quite as droney as that. Generally riff-based guitar rock with a good bit of power behind it.

“It’s really sort of riff orientated our stuff, as long as you’ve got a decent hook.

“For the purpose of our 20th anniversary we choose the HAC I think cause Paul and I are from Irvine and that’s were we did a lot of our earlier gigs.”

The show will be on Friday, December 8 at the Harbour Arts Centre. Tickets cost £6