Air Traffic frontman Chris Wall was over the moon, however, when he found Dellboy types flogging ripped off t-shirts and tickets touts trading outside one of his band's London shows.

"On the last tour when we played at Koko there were touts and knock off merch," he confirms. "If I get angry at them then it's going well.

"But it was one of the first gigs where I felt like it was real. I'm quite pessimistic about whether people are going to turn up, but there I was blown away by the crowd."

And it was the response on that January tour that prompted the booking agent they share with Radiohead to fix-up the jaunt that has them playing Academy 2 at Sheffield's newest venue on Saturday.

"I was happy to leave it at that and come back with the second album, but now I'm really excited. We've got nothing to promote so this is the glory tour," quips Chris. "I'd like to do some new stuff so people know where it's going and won't be shocked by what's coming, but I think we'll just do the album."

While Air Traffic are 'tidying up' the campaign for their quality debut Fractured Life here, in the US things are just starting to take off.

A year after bursting on to the domestic scene, Chris is stoical about what Air Traffic have achieved. "We didn't really have a concept of how it would work, but I had a dream it would go like Coldplay which it has not.

"But I cannot help feeling that we've built something solid and real. We're playing to really big crowds and people keep coming back and that's overwhelming – people are still holding on to us."

Corporate shifts at their label EMI has maybe meant lack of marketing focus for the album, but Air Traffic have scored well with singles such as Charlotte, Shooting Star and Never Even Told Me Her Name.

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"At least we've not rocketed into the stratosphere only to come crashing down as happens to so many bands. We have got continuous growth while a lot around us have gone up and then down. So I'm really happy – we're in a cool place with a solid fanbase."

Chris and pals have also been penning new songs ahead of their visit to the States where Fractured Life is the number one most added record at college radio. There it features new song Come On – available here via free download – while the first single will be Charlotte.

"Before this our songs were fizzing in the proverbial pipeline – now we're back at source. I was struggling big time before Christmas thinking 'I've got to write a song, got to write 'the song'.

"I took a break from it for a while and now I've come back to my parents' place in Bournemouth for a chillout session and found it easy. I've written a few things here and there. I did an improv session a couple of weeks ago and got a lot of stuff I'm excited to work on."

Adds Chris: "I don't necessarily write about specific things. Charlotte was written about somebody and is quite an immature song.

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