After a five year break Deacon Blue are back with a new album and a date in Oxford as part of their UK tour.

The band had a string of top 40 hits including 17 singles and six albums and toured the world playing to huge audiences in the eighties and early nineties.

Ricky Ross formed the band in 1985, taking the name from a Steely Dan song, and remained the lead vocalist and the main songwriter throughout.

Deacon Blue began their musical career in and around Glasgow, and one of their earliest songs was Dignity which attracted record company interest from CBS and resulted in a deal which was signed in August 1986.

Since then there have been sell out tours, chart topping albums and singles and a five year sabbatical from the music business with all the band members pursuing other things.

Backing vocalist Lorraine McIntosh, who went on to appear in Ken Loach's film My Name is Joe, said: "We have had a lot of time off! The band is not the way that it was back in the early days, it is no longer a career.

"We are all doing different things and because we all have families and other commitments we can't be in the band the way we were back then, but we would still like to be able to go out and tour occasionally and hopefully it seems like we will be able to do that."

Deacon Blue began touring again in April this year, and have signed a new deal with the Papillon record label and released their latest album Homesick.

Lorraine added: "Ricky had made a solo album with Epic but it didn't do very well and so decided to finance his own. He couldn't afford to go on doing that and got a deal with Papillon, but part of the deal was that Deacon Blue would record a single. It had never occurred to us to go back to the studio but we recorded a new album under difficult circumstances with all the band members coming into the studio when they could find the time.

"The new album has given us some new material to tour with. Years ago if a single or an album had not done well I would have been worried about it, but now other things have taken over in our lives and we don't have the time to sit down and worry about it. We all feel that we are very privileged to have been able to make more records and that people still want to come and see us on tour."

Deacon Blue will be at The Apollo, Oxford on Saturday October 27.