A Celtic trad band at a festival better known for showcasing the indie and rock groups of tomorrow would have been out of place just a few years ago, but Madra Salach found themselves sandwiched between Little Grandad and Westside Cowboy, two other bands drawing from aspects of the folk tradition and blending them with an indie sensibility.

"It felt very curated," says Paul. "It's very cool to feel like you're part of a scene. When we were teenagers, all those bands were a bit older and felt completely out of reach, but now we're talking to Little Grandad or Westside Cowboy and thinking 'fuck, now we're the new bands!'

"There's a natural bond that you have because you're all going through this weird experience together, and obviously, we're all big music fans. It helps that they're all such lovely people, so you really do feel like a part of something."

While Little Grandad and Westside Cowboy draw from different parts of the folk canon from Madra Salach, other bands cleave even closer to their blending of traditional Celtic folk and rockier sounds. Lankum, The Mary Wallopers and Brògeal have all blazed a trail in a similar lane over the last few years, while even the likes of Fontaines D.C and Kneecap have incorporated elements of the genre into their songs in the past. A handful of bands might not seem like big news, but trad folk hasn't seen this much of the limelight since the Pogues gave it a kick up the arse nearly forty years ago.

"We could see the appetite was there," acknowledges Paul. "I don't want that to sound capitalistic, but I do remember saying to the lads: 'there's so much demand for this and at the moment it's not being fulfilled in the way that we could do it'. So, it was conscious in that sense. There definitely was a moment when we sat around and said, 'Let's try this fucking folk revival thing'."

That's not to say that they sprang out of the gate fully formed, with the initial conception of the band as a straight-down-the-line folk act soon morphing into a mongrel blend of trad and electric (fittingly, the Irish name Madra Salach literally translates to 'Dirty Dog'). "It's largely down to this man Adam Cullen," says Paul, gesturing at the band's guitarist across the table. "If you had shown me at the beginning how rocky and electric the sets have gotten, I'd have been surprised. It was always going to have electronic elements, but I thought it'd be slower and tamer than it's become."

The sets he refers to are an absolute tour de force, with songs transformed into all-encompassing catharsis for those in the crowd. For a band operating in a genre known for reworking and covering old standards, it's also notable just how many of Madra Salach's songs are their own. A rendition of Ewan MacColl's relatively obscure 'Tunnel Tigers' is the only straight cover the band do live, nestled in among the few tracks the band themselves have released so far.

"It's not a forced thing," says Adam of their decision to avoid the classics. "If a song comes along or Paul finds a song and thinks we can do something with it, we'll give it a try. But we're not a band who are going to go out of our way to try and find a song we can cover, because we're far more focused on writing our own original material. We'll still have a go at making old folk standards our own, but it's not the core of who we are."

It's a decision that comes back to the band's dual DNA, with one foot firmly in Celtic trad and the other in the world of indie music and sweaty basement shows. Both are crucial to what makes Madra Salach work, but in terms of venues played and the fanbase they've accrued, it's far more 'big night out' than 'pub session'. 

"We're a guitar band really," says Paul. "We don't have the traditional musicianship that a group who had come from the folk tradition would have. Don't get me wrong, the lads are fantastic, but we don't know reels, and we don't know jigs [traditional Irish instrumentals]. There are also no fiddle players, so we just feel like more of a classic guitar band in that way, I'd say, just with a folk heart. Madra Salach actually started off as a side-project for us. It's central to us all now, but that initial start means that we've always seen it as a way to play the songs we want to play, just through the lens of folk.

"I have always gravitated towards folk lyrically, though," he adds. "It's innately political, but there's this core idea that it belongs to everyone, which really appeals to me. It's all about telling these deeply human stories."

It's all pretty considered stuff for a band so early in their career, but Madra Salach have been forced to orient themselves pretty quickly on what can only be described as a meteoric rise. "It's a privilege," says Adam, when asked how it feels to be in the spotlight before their debut album is even recorded. "We're lucky too in the sense that we're just so busy that we don't have any time to worry about it, to be honest."

"Things have changed so fast," adds Paul. "When we put the first EP together, fucking no one cared about us, so it was easy not to overthink it. It was just a slice of where we were at, and I totally stand by it as a piece of work. But that EP is representative of what I initially thought Madra Salach would be, which is slower soundscape arrangements. We also just put together some songs, some arrangements that we were proud of and sent it out into the world, but now people are taking it as a statement of intent, which it was never meant to be.

"There's a little bit more pressure for the next release, but I think we'll just do whatever we find exciting. It'll definitely be more reflective of where we are now after gigging and playing live, which has hugely shaped our direction. We've figured out who we are and what we want to be through playing live.

"Luckily, lots of us in the band write songs," he adds. "So whatever we do next, there'll be lots left on the cutting room floor. It's nice not to be scraping around for tunes. Seeing what people like off the first EP has been such a learning curve, too. When we wrote 'The Man Who Seeks Pleasure', we were really proud of it, but we assumed it'd be quite a niche track, audience-wise. It's a seven-minute slow burner with no verse and chorus structure - and it's our biggest tune! The moral of the story is that you can't think about it too much, you've just got to keep banging shit out and if people lose interest, then tough."

Madra Salach are touring the UK this September and October.