The Proclaimers: Leith It Alone.

The Proclaimers play the Tivoli Theatre on March 27 and the East Coast Blues & Roots Music Festival at Byron Bay on March 29 and 30.

"They should let Celtic and Rangers leave the Scottish competition and go and play in the Premier League. There's a lot of gossip to say that they want to. If they did we'd have a much better and fairer Scottish league. Nobody can compete against the kind of money they command and the players it buys them."

Charlie Reid is talking about one of his main passions - soccer; he's a serious supporter of Hibernian Football Club and, with his twin Craig, he left the studios - and an album half-written - to help save the club in the early '90s.

But the statement also says more about the twins and their band, The Proclaimers: deeply unfashionable with their geeky spectacles and thick brogue accents, their folk-flecked pop and rock with distinct soul influences has somehow made them a national Scottish treasure renowned for its honesty and sensitivity. Their biggest-selling, now legendary, album Sunshine On Leith (1988) may have produced the worldwide smash hit love song, I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles), but even more notable were its strong, socio-economic themes. On their new album Persevere, Scotland's Story pays tribute to the country's working class heroes.

"If there's something to be said, there's not much point in not saying it," Charlie says. "We've always been that way. Somebody once said there's not anybody coming along to replace you. They were right. There's no other Scottish band that sounds like us so we've got the opportunity and we have to make something of it. There's a lot of different genres out there; one of them is us. Mind you, I'd have preferred to have released more than four albums in 16 years and the gap between the last one, Hit The Highway (1993) and this one just can't happen again."

Persevere is a fitting title because as Charlie laughs, "We've really had to. I mean you look at our career on paper and it has to be a triumph of perseverance." But he also reminds that it's the motto of the twins' home town of Leith. Very Scottish. Very Celtic. And that in itself is rather remarkable: the broad sweep of Celtic culture on not only music but literature and other arts - all from land masses and populations that are tiny in world terms.

"I think we've always been proud to be part of that," he says, "although I don't think we're that conscious of being Celtic. The whole folk and mythology side of Celticism is in our blood but we don't express that lyrically in our songs; there are plenty of other groups already doing it very well. I think we sing about life - sometimes it isn't necessarily uniquely Scottish but its heart is Scottish. At other times though we are making a point about social conditions or the way of the working man."

After the vaudevillian Hit The Highway, which included the passionate and celebrated Let's Get Married, "Domesticity set in and we started raising families," Charlie says, "and then the writing block seemed to kick in."

However, they didn't plan to remain off the scene for so long. In 1995, their father, Ian, became sick and the twins helped care for him until his death 18 months later. Then there was more to do down at Hibernian and a lot of family business: "Craig's wife had a couple of kids, my wife and I had a kid as well. We've got two young sons of our own and I've got an older son from a previous marriage. And my wife's mother died after along illness. Then there were the age-honoured record company problems and they took some time to sort out."

"I guess some people would ask why we're still going after all these years," Charlie muses. "Truth is we've not really considered not going on. As long as we can write good songs - and I think we can always get better at that - then I know I'm always going to want to make records. For me, it's always been about getting as good as say Merle Haggard. I admire the rawness, quality and honesty of his songs. The first time I heard his Mama Tried, I cried. It's like the exact opposite of someone putting all his woes on other people and admitting he screwed up himself. He just says I did it. I have no excuse. I made a mess of my life. An honesty like that is inspirational."