NOT even Turin Brakes thought they would go on to release their seventh studio album this year when they formed in 1999.

"No, not at all," admits Gale Paridjanian, one half of the original duo from Balham, London, alongside Olly Knights. "I mean, sometimes when we were getting ready to make this record, I was thinking, 'Does anyone make seven albums? Did The Beatles make seven albums! Wasn't it meant to be concluded for us by now?'."

The answer was No, so much so that Lost Property has drawn very favourable reviews and Paridjanian and Knights and their long-time collaborators, Rob Allum and Eddie Myer, are touring once more, 17 years after Olly and Gale began creating their mellifluous music in a millennial South London bedroom. Their Leeds Brudenell Social Club gig on Saturday has sold out already, but you may have better luck acquiring a ticket for Sunday night at The Duchess in York.

Gale attributes Turin Brakes' longevity to not burning too brightly too quickly and then fizzling out. Using a cooking metaphor, he says: "We always just simmered rather than coming to the boil, and we've been making music since we were eight. We were making it way before we had any record deal; it's just part of our life. It comes down to whether you're lucky enough to do it as your career, and every day we thank our lucky stars that we're doing this."

Turin Brakes have been through the experience of making four albums for EMI with all the attendant hit singles, billboard adverts and TV transmissions, but Lost Property, released on January 29, found them working for Cooking Vinyl, freed from the pressure cooker of a major label.

"I think we were at the point where we've done a lot of things we were thinking about doing with production or styles that we wanted to try out, and we've got to the point where we just want to make great music and not to have to think about it," says Gale. "It's had a better response than we had for the past two or three records, particularly on the radio, and I wonder if that's because of the simplicity of the music."

Rob Allum and Eddie Myer are part of Turin Brakes more than ever before. "Rob's our manager too, and they pulled us through when things went quiet and it got lonely and dark," says Gale. "They really helped by saying, 'Come on, play some gigs', and we now get them involved earlier in the recording process, so we're very much a four-piece that tours and records together.

"We take whatever ideas they come up with, if we thinking about a chorus, and we can kick it around with them till we find what we want. That's been a real breath of fresh for us."

The album artwork for Lost Property includes the image of an urban spaceman marooned in a deckchair as half-hidden shapes loom in the dark behind a winter lawn. "We saw this piece of art in Brighton by Sam Chivers, who also did our last album artwork, and it kind of summed everything up for us: our slightly negative, or slightly positive feeling about the future," says Gale.

The album's press release talks of "the enigmatic explorations of normality at the heart of Olly Knight’s lyrics", but what does that mean, Gale? "Yeah, that's definitely the way that the lyrics work, pulling out things that might seem mundane but are in fact part of the bigger picture, where everything is part of a grand scheme," he says. "It's more of a philosophical thought process than anything else."

Meanwhile, York singer-songwriter Benjamin Francis Leftwich has beaten a path to Turin Brakes' door to collaborate with Olly and Gale. "We did some songwriting with Ben, which I think started with him contacting us by Twitter," recalls Gale. "We listened to his songs and it's lovely stuff, and so we had a couple of songwriting sessions with him in London.

"There were a couple of songs that we did with him but apparently they're not going to make it on to his new album. I think he just liked to write with as many people as possible, to try things out. Whenever he was meeting us, he'd just met someone else or was going to meet someone else afterwards. He likes things to be flexible and fluid, and when he was with us writing, songs were the focus, rather than thinking about making his second record. It was all about ideas."

As Turin Brakes prepare to play York, they have good memories of both their last gig and Ben's involvement. "He helped us unload our gear," says Gale. "That's a sign of a great guy, when he's happy to be your roadie for the day."

Turin Brakes play Leeds Brudenell Social Club on Saturday, sold out; The Duchess, York, on Sunday. Box office: theduchess.co.uk