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Glastonbury Unsigned offers small bands from all over the country the chance to compete for a slot on one of the festival’s major stages. Understandably, thousands enter, so to even make it into the final 12 is something of an achievement.

"It feels good. We’re looking forward to it, to going down and playing to Michael Eavis and Emily and everyone else down there.

"It’d mean a lot to us [to win]. It’s the biggest festival in this country and it’s somewhere I’ve been going myself for years."

Adam’s something of a Glastonbury regular, both with and without his guitar, and the rest of the band have already tasted the festival as performers too, though not at the level that winning the contest would give them.

The Travelling Band's Adam playing live

"We played there last year in the Late ‘N’ Live tent, which Concrete Recordings put on, and I’ve done Glastonbury Radio in the past with the band I was in before, The Brothers With Different Mothers. One way or another, I’ve been going since 1998.

"So bearing all that in mind, to be able to play one of the bigger stages would be fantastic."

Standing in their way is the final and 11 other bands. Tempting as it must be to try and come up with something amazing for their show in front of the judges, Adam says they’ll keep things simple.

"We’ve just got to go and do our own thing. I don’t think we’ll be doing anything different from what we usually do live – just giving it everything we can, putting a nice set together for our 20 minutes and hoping for the best."

Back to the roots

While The Travelling Band are certainly different from those previous winners from Manchester, The Deadbeats and Liz Green, there is a common thread running between them – that of acoustic-led music, and it’s something that is growing in popularity all over Manchester.

Last year's winner - Liz Green

Adam believes that the gathering interest in their style of music is a reaction to the increasingly corporate nature of the music industry.

"There’s a lot of home-grown nights popping up, moving things away from the bigger venues, and a lot of them are folk and acoustic nights with musicians from different bands playing with each other.

"It’s a move away from the big industry thing – it’s more back-to-basics, back to the roots of it just being people sat down with acoustic guitars playing songs.

"There’s a nice community growing and it’s not just in Manchester. We’ve been gigging all over the country and there’s nights popping up everywhere.Ìý In Scotland, for example, there’s the Fence Collective [King Creosote’s loosely gathered flock of musicians] which is really home-grown, and there’s new folk nights popping up in London too.

The Travelling Band

"It’s becoming like a small world of musicians where everyone knows each other and that can only be a good thing."

A small world with some big talents, of which The Travelling Band are undoubtedly one, and even if they don’t win the contest, they’ll probably still strap on their guitars and get down to Somerset to spread their good feeling and fine music around.

It seems for them, it’s not so much about the all-conquering win but more about the taking part – or to put it another way, it’s not about the journey’s end, it’s all about the travelling.

The band play the Glastonbury New Talent final on Saturday 29 March before returning to Manchester to play the Deaf Institute as support to Findlay Brown on Tuesday 1 April and the Roadhouse with The Sonic Hearts on Monday 7 April.

The Travelling Band's 'The Redemption of Mr Tom' EP is out on Monday 21 April.