FROM the early jamming days in a cramped attic barely knee-high with a grasshopper to the BBC Introducing Stage at Glastonbury, Scott Miller’s side gig took a serious turn six years when he fell in with Dry the River.

One “folky pastoral” demo later and the band became the centre of a furious record label bidding war. Soon Dry the River was headlining the UK’s most coveted festival stages and touring America.

“It has gone quick from us being in our bedrooms playing music to all this,” admits the bass player with obvious disbelief.

“At the start Dry the River was a hobby; I was still working full time.

“It was quite a quick upstart. We were playing gigs in London and the next thing we knew we had record companies coming to us. It has been a crazy ride.”

While meteoric, their ascension was the toil of 15 years, he insists, and despite a loyal following, lasting recognition remains somewhat elusive.

“We were in our mid-20s when this took off but we all had our first bands at 10 or 11 years old,” adds the 31-year-old. “My brother and I started a band around that age with a couple of other friends and we would get together on a Saturday and have band practice in their attic. “Dry the River happened in a short space of time but we were all itching for it to happen.

“Sometimes I think ‘Why are we not getting more notice?’ Other days you look back at what we’ve done over the last six years, travelling to America, doing gigs in Asia and playing the main stage at Reading and Leeds and the second main stage at Glastonbury and you think it’s crazy. There was a trippy feeling walking on this big stage in Reading in front of such a big crowd. It was really special. Reading was the first festival I went to when I was 15.”

Dry the River was born out of a collaboration in 2009. Frontman Peter Liddle enlisted Scott’s childhood friend and drummer Jon Warren to work on some of his songs. Scott joined the line-up, as did Matt Taylor.

After an initial foray into stripped acoustic folk, the musicians’ rock roots resurfaced launching their sound into a new genre-blurring direction – but retaining their signature melancholy ditties.

“When we started working together we wanted to play something a bit more melodic. Pete had these songs that were stripped back and more acoustic. But as time went on our rocky background started creeping back in and somehow that sounds define what Dry the River is now. It’s still folk music and harmonies but every now and then we want to rock out and play something heavier.”

Only a select few will get a live airing of their unique sound this summer. After overextending themselves performing more than 40 festivals in one stretch, the bandmates have been more selective with their festival pickings over the years. The suitably intimate and convivial, Tadstock Festival, where they will make their debut, is one of five to have made the cut both at home and abroad this summer.

Every spare moment off the road has been dedicated to their third album – still very much a work in progress, Scott clarifies. The next opus promises another change of course for the ever-evolving band.

“It might be a bit of a departure,” he reveals. “It will be a middle ground between the first and second album, a 1.5 album. But it’s all subject to change.”

Tadstock at Kencot Hill Farm will take place on Saturday, August 29. Tickets are £25 for adults and between £5 and £10 for children aged 6 to 15. To book go to www.tadstock.co.uk.