Now in their 31st year, Stiff Little Fingers are about to embark on a full UK tour, gracing Plug tonight, Friday.

But rewind to 1977 and Belfast's Stiff Little Fingers were a very different band – they were called Highway Star, a name that was duly dumped upon the band's discovery of punk. The band then adopted their more edgy name, after the song by punk band The Vibrators.

But it wasn't only the discovery of punk that proved a seminal moment in the shaping of Stiff Little Fingers.

Daily Express journalist Gordon Ogilivie also had a part to play in the band's fate. Ogilivie urged the band to write about the life they were experiencing first-hand – the political strife in Belfast between the Republicans and Loyalists.

"That was the start of a writing relationship," says Burns, who still cites Ogilivie as one of his closest friends. "I was working with Gordon until '87. We shared a flat and bounced ideas off each other. It was a case of 'I've got a brilliant idea', so we'd get a guitar out. Unfortunately, it wasn't too good for the person watching TV."

The band's output fused punk rock with hard, topical lyrical themes. Songs included Suspect Device, whose lyrics explicitly evoke the Troubles: "It's a suspect device that's left 2000 dead."

Burns says: "I was very politically minded but at 18 or 19 years old you tend to be very angry against the world – this worked well with Gordon, because he was a bit older and would say, 'Come on, you don't really think that.' He helped refine it."

Politics still plays a major part in Stiff Little Fingers' songs: "I write about anything from seeing homeless people in shop doorways to troops being sent to Iran and Iraq, which doesn't have anything to do with 9/11."

Burns does, however, acknowledge his age: "I am 50 this year so I am taking a different approach – I'm reflecting back on how the world has changed. I want to talk with my heart and my head."

The band's new album, which has yet to receive its official title, is due for release soon. "I was going to call it Liars Club – it's a title based on George Bush and Tony Blair. I was driving home from the studio one night (in Chicago) and there was this giant Bush/Blair billboard and immediately next to it was a club called Liars Club. It seemed fitting."

But, contrary to Stiff Little Fingers' dark lyricism and guttural, rough aesthetic, Burns is clearly, quietly spoken and polite – qualities well suited to his one-year tenure as a BBC Radio 1 producer in 1987. "There wasn't much to do. I helped with live music production and booked bands but it was very time-consuming."

Also on his CV, rather surprisingly, is a stint as an accountant. "I started as an accountant's clerk and I had failed my maths O-level four times," he laughs. "It's really only Ireland where that could happen."

Stiff Little Fingers play at Plug tonight (October 10).

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