If tropical sounds, goats cheese fritters and peanut butter vibes are the what Glass Animals are preaching, then we are amongst the converted. The four piece band from Oxford first made mainstream waves with their debut single Gooey. Listeners were drawn in by the gloopy, almost Disney-esque sounds of the opening notes and by the mischievous sense of adventure in the playful lyrics “Right my little Pooh Bear, wanna take a chance?” There’s talk of “Tipsy-topsy slurs” and melodies evoking hazy summer days on the brink of dusk. “I’ll take your gloom, puff it into plumes”.

If we had been told that the band had spent the last five years living in some sort of Alice and Wonderland/Jungle Book alternative universe, we’d probably have nodded without giving it a second thought.

We caught up with drummer Joe Seaward to find out exactly where these sultry, mesmerising tunes originated.

The band members first met in school around the age of twelve. “We never really did anything to do with music, we were just doing what thirteen year-olds do, hanging out and listening to music and stuff.”

It was years later before the four friends decided to unite to record their musings and by this time they were all students at University. “I was studying Anthropology, Dave was doing Medicine. Ed and Drew were studying Music.”

Dave Bayley [lead singer/songwriter] began writing music while in his second year of his medical degree. The band recorded some tracks and put them online. The response that followed completely took them by surprise.

“It all went a bit mental so we just took it offline. We had to take it down because we didn’t really know what to do with it,” Seaward tells GoldenPlec.

They said ‘Is there anything you want to do?’ and we said we’d love to build a forest.

Once all four members finished their degrees they decided to give the band a shot for one year and see if they could make anything of it. “We said if it didn’t work out in that year we’d go off and do something sensible, or try to. But we haven’t looked back since."

The decision to take down their first musical offerings seems, in hindsight, to have been a clever one. They knew there was a significant amount of interest in their sound but their ideas were not yet fully formed. The extra time allowed Glass Animals to blossom.

“There was a lot of nothing, it was really exciting but we had to write music and find out who we were. The band didn’t exist, we’d never done it before so we had to figure out what worked. We had to figure out what we were about and what the aesthetic of the whole thing was.

"Without any of those things it doesn’t really work so at the end of that year we released an EP with four songs on it.”

Following the success of the EP, Glass Animals released their kaleidoscopic debut album 'ZABA'. It’s difficult to pick one word to describe their overall sound of an album riddled with unusual audio snippets. 'ZABA' is a labryinth of jungle themes, percussion reminiscent of rain forests, and hypnotizing vocals fluidly swirling together to form a sound that can only be classed as Glass Animals.

In Black Mambo, for example, – there’s plucking of strings that almost sounds like a pepper grinder. Tantalizing vocals and hypnotic beats are paired with syrupy notes resembling drops of water in a glimmering pool.

“A lot of it comes from Dave's head," Seaward says. "He writes music very late at night. He kind of wakes up with ideas; it’s really strange but that’s how his mind works. We’ll take it away, deconstruct it and start again. That’s kind of what the relationship is like and it works really well. But yeah, a lot of the weird noises come from him or his head.”

"Electric Picinc was wicked. It compeltely blew us away

Most of the noises are not samples found on the internet or ones provided by a producer. “There are a lot of field recordings. Dave’s got recordings of his rabbit on there. They’re all fucked around with so it doesn’t really sound quite right. I guess it comes from everywhere.”

The album opened doors for the band around the world. Joe talks about the strange feeling that comes with fans on the other side of the Atlantic knowing the words to songs you’ve crafted.

“It’s so far away from home that none of us expected it to happen and it has. It’s mental and I can’t describe to you how weird it is. We played in America five times last year and visited the [main] venues that people play and then all of these places in between with 400 people singing everything. It’s really amazing.”

Successful tours in the US led to a performance of Gooey on The David Letterman Show, where the band performed amidst atmospheric lighting and large exotic ferns.

“They said ‘Is there anything you want to do?’ and we said we’d love to build a forest. It was very surreal. I can’t think about what we’re doing because it would totally blow your mind. But the next day when I saw it on TV I was totally blown away by it.”

Dave’s got recordings of his rabbit on there.

Before they played Electric Picnic last year, we asked Glass Animals what fans should expect from their show. The response? “Goats cheese fritters”. Did they deliver?

“I think we were probably just in a weird mood when that happened," Joe says, laughing. "We get kind of carried away with interviews. We sometimes just throw words out.

"Electric Picinc was wicked. It compeltely blew us away, I think we played twice. We arrived at lunchtime and I think we saw the end of Outkast. We didn’t really get enough time to explore, but no, no goats cheese fritters.”

Glass Animals have a busy summer touring schedule ahead. Joe is particularly looking forward to Reading and Leeds, a festival they used to attend as punters. They will return to Irish soil to play Longitude festival in July.

“We did Latitude last year and it was wicked. The Longitude line up is amazing. If Electric Picnic was anything to go by we’ve now got expectations.”

Following their recent sold out performance in the Academy, we are excited to see Glass Animals return to Dublin this Summer.

Tickets to Longitude are available via usual outlets now.