Lucia Morales Urcola (you can call her Lu) and Brian ‘Doc’ Docherty of April Four have only ever worked face-to face on a handful of occasions back in 2017 when Urcola was visiting Glasgow on a tourist visa from her native Chile. What they created together in a short space of time, with Urcola on vocals and Docherty on modular synth soundscapes, was enough to stay with both of them as they went their separate ways: Urcola back to Santiago to work at a tech company and Docherty to his sound production and composition projects.

Pulled back to music, Urcola contacted Docherty again in 2021 at the very moment he unearthed their unfinished track. With the pandemic pushing them into remote collaboration as much as any geographical distance, they kept up a productive transatlantic exchange for the next 18 months, completing their debut album Amendment.

‘It’s a collection of stories that might have happened a long time ago,’ explains lyricist Urcola. ‘It’s about different life adventures. Some are about me but then it went totally fictional. As a whole, it’s someone’s life; memorable things they have gone through.’

‘It’s also us getting to know each other,’ says Docherty. ‘We have a solid foundation now and we can express ourselves freely.’

‘I’ve never been interested in writing a pop hit,’ adds Urcola. ‘I write my feelings. I pour my soul into it. I don’t even think about it. It’s like journaling to me but it makes you self-conscious. I like writing in English because it’s not my first language, so it feels less vulnerable.’

While April Four is Urcola’s first group (‘I was always interested in music as a child but never brave enough to pursue,’ she says), Docherty is a veteran of a number of Glasgow bands, playing bass with The Bluebells and Adventures In Stereo before diverging into soundtrack work for film and theatre. Plus he has his own solo endeavours as Scientific Support Dept and The Wayne Devro Set.

The challenges of remote working across continents were laid bare when a first attempt at interviewing the duo by Zoom was foiled by a massive power outage in Santiago. While they have made a virtue of their online collaboration, Urcola is excited by her upcoming visit to Glasgow. By the time you read this, she will be back in the city which birthed April Four for a concentrated period of activity involving gigs, promo, snapping their first group photographs, and recording their already written second album in Marco Rea’s Barne Studio in Duntocher.

‘We might have to get some boxing gloves up in the studio,’ jokes Docherty about the prospect of creating in the same space. ‘I think we’ll bounce off each other. I take a while to get something I think is good. Being in the same room, there’s a good chance we’ll get to that point sooner but we respect you need the space to figure that out.’ Urcola is fired up at the prospect: ‘We’ll prioritise the main thing but we’ll scramble anything else we can fit into our schedule.’

Amendment is released by The Barne Society on Wednesday 30 July; April Four play Bloc, Glasgow, Wednesday 30 July; The Tolbooth, Stirling, Saturday 2 August.