EVERY time a band earns a spot on the SAY Award longlist a few eyebrows will be raised – when they do it with the first record out of the gate, it's time to sit up and pay attention.

This time last year Cloth were a relatively unknown trio preparing to unveil their first record. Like all others, they had worked hard, pushed their own boundaries, crafted a sound that they were excited about and were hungry for everyone to hear their work.

They chose to release in November, though there were some concerns that their timing might work against them in trying to drum up some buzz. But after a month or two, Cloth's eponymous first album began to turn heads.

As it snowballed, the 10-track debut generated a lot of interest. It clocked up tens of thousands of streams and last month it was included the Scottish Album of the Year Awards' longlist with 19 other hopefuls. The nomination is no less than the band deserves and is a testament to their commitment and drive to deliver a unique offering to the Scottish music scene.

"We really weren't expecting it," the group's Rachel Swinton tells The Weekender. "There were so many great albums on the eligibility list, so it was really cool to make the longlist.

"Because it was such a late release in 2019, I had a feeling that it would just get buried among Christmastime. It started to pick up again in 2020 and there was some great support from local record shops who gave it a big boost and opened it up to some really cool audiences.

"From there, our name and the album started to get out there a bit more and it's been really cool to see it take off like that."

Singer Rachel shares guitar duties with twin brother Paul, and both started the writing process for the album a couple of years ago. Though neither would have envisioned the critical success it has become, they are elated by the acclaim all the same.

Paul adds: "We were told [about the SAY award nomination] a few days beforehand, but we still tuned into the announcement and were extremely excited when it came about, and they were announcing the bands.

"It was just really nice to hear Vic Galloway and Nicola Meighan talk about the album in such a lovely way; they are people who have supported us through their radio shows – so it was nice to have them there for that.

"It's a lovely thing…to look back and see how things started, and all the work we put into the album, to now sit back and see that a lot of people are really liking it to the point that it has been nominated for an award."

Rachel and Paul have been playing the guitar since they were around 10 years old. They linked-up with drummer Clare Gallacher while at university, with Cloth forming shortly after graduation.

They played their first gig in early 2018 and released a few singles and an EP that year, before work began on the album.

Their sound is typified by ethereal melodies and light-touch guitar harmonics. They can build a variety of moods from simple movements but there is always special attention paid to how the instrumentation blends or clashes.

Paul continues: "Our sound came about pretty organically, over those few years where we were writing and not really gigging.

"We were trying out quite a few different things, and initially we were playing a bit heavier than we are now.

"But bands like my Bloody Valentine and some other shoe-gazey stuff kept coming back for us. The Cocteau Twins were another band that just seemed to have an influence on us and how we began to arrange things and stripping back some of the instrumentation.

"We found that using a lot of harmonics adds some really great space to songs and some really atmospheric textures. Having that sound underpinned by a good strong riff or a well-thought-out rhythm was something we tend to gravitate towards and became the kind of music we started making for Cloth."

He added: "One of things that attracts me to, really, any type of music is a minimal arrangement, where there are only a few instruments without which the song would not survive.

"Not every song should be atmospheric, but it's a by-product of wanting to make the most of the instruments that you have there – you can see then what a guitar is capable of if you put it through certain effects and make something far bigger than a few plucked out notes.

"I've always enjoyed music where you can hear instruments being used in non-typical ways."

It's fair to say that Cloth's musical style lends itself more to an album than radio-friendly singles – that said Old Bear has already amassed almost 300,000 streams on Spotify.

The nature of last year's album is no accident; the band went to great lengths to make sure it was a piece of work than can be enjoyed for years to come – it is a record of substance.

"We always love hearing people say that," Paul adds. "That's the type of albums we like; ones where you would revisit it and find different things each time.

"That's something we had thought about for our own album. We didn't want it to be a bowlful of sugar, where you'd get a great hit but doesn't last."

Cloth's debut album will forever boast the accolade of being – at least – one of twenty albums released in 2019-2020. With that comes a certain weight of expectation as the band look to capitalise on their situation.

The good news there is that work on new material is already under way, with the prospect of some added experimentation thrown into the mix.

Paul says: "We've been working away and having spent a while with these new songs, there's something different happening.

"But it'll just be a wee while before we can get them out, but the thought of releasing new material is keeping us going.

"I think there is a new direction taking hold, which is really exciting for us."