The Wedding Present have announced a gig in Hitchin as live music returns to the town.

Presented by Juicebox Live in association with Spider Touring, the indie rock stalwarts will play Club 85 in Whinbush Road on Thursday, September 30.

Championed by the late John Peel, The Wedding Present have scored 18 UK Top 40 hit singles… not bad for a band that has, from its inception, stubbornly refused to play the record industry’s game.

It all started in 1985 when David Lewis Gedge boarded a National Express coach in London with 500 records packed into a pair of his mother's suitcases and, in this fashion, delivered the band's debut single Go Out And Get 'Em, Boy! to a distribution company in Yorkshire.

That pioneering spirit has been at the core of the band’s philosophy ever since.

From 1987 debut album George Best, which featured the Northern Ireland football legend on the cover, the band has charted an appealing, if often eccentric, course of its very own.

Tickets for the band's Club 85 gig cost £25 in advance and are on sale now.