Things have never run smoothly for the Lost Soul Band. By rights, in the early 1990s, when the Edinburgh-based five-piece were at their peak, they should have become one of Scotland's national treasures. As it went, however, their record label dropped them after releasing two albums, the loose-knit Friday the 13th and Everything's Rosie, and the more polished The Land of Do As You Please.

This left the band's Bob Dylan and Van Morrison-inspired songwriting high and dry in the era of American grunge bands and then the beginnings of Britpop. The Lost Soul Band's sound, heartfelt and euphoric as it was on songs such as Looking Through the Butcher's Window, Coffee and Hope and You Can't Win them All Mum, simply didn't fit in with the prevailing orthodoxies. A final, self-released album, Hung Like Jesus, was a more strung-out affair than its predecessors, and the band imploded shortly after.

Thirteen years on, singer/songwriter/guitarist Gordon Grahame, keyboardist and writing foil Mike Hall, bass player Richard Buchanan, drummer Brian Hall and percussionist Gavin Smith have reunited to go through their back catalogue for just two very special festive shows. Already, however, the curse of the Lost Soul Band has struck again: following last week's fire in Edinburgh's Victoria Street, the Liquid Room, where the band were scheduled to play, was damaged to the extent of rendering it unusable. Fortunately, all scheduled Liquid Room shows have been transferred to the recently opened Picture House, allowing the Lost Soul Band to make their comeback in style.

The new shows promise to be emotional occasions, both for old- time fans and for the band themselves. "I'm really feeling quite nervous," gushes Grahame down the line from London, where he now lives. "Not in a bad way - but I've been running through the tracks, sitting in the lounge with my guitar on and visualising the first song of the night. And I just went to jelly, and had palpitations.

"We're going to be playing these songs again to people who've been sitting on the recorded versions for 18 years and know exactly what they want. I haven't even had the albums for 10 years - I had to get them on eBay. They sounded pretty rough and ready, and I was thinking, How am I gonna do this?' And Richard says to me, Yeah, you're a bit of a crooner now.'"

The current gigs came about after Gavin Smith heard a song on the radio by the late-eighties Icelandic band the Sugarcubes (the singer Bjork's former group) and started rooting through boxes of old tapes to see if he had a copy. What he found instead was a recording of a 1992 Lost Soul Band show broadcast on Radio Forth.

Smith played it on car rides to gigs with his current band the Vagabonds, who also feature singer/guitarist the Sandyman. The Sandyman is a legend on the pub-band circuit, and an important part of Lost Soul Band lore, even joining them in their final incarnation. Smith suggested it might be an idea to get the original band back together, and the Sandyman contacted Grahame.

"There were one or two occasions when it might have happened before, but it never got off base," says Grahame. "This time, though, Gavin got on a mission. I said I was up for it, but wasn't sure if everyone would want to do it. But one Mike said yes - and was probably the most gung-ho about it out of all of us - I thought, oh no, I've got to do it now.

"Even then we weren't sure if there'd be any interest, but promoters DF Concerts jumped at it. We just have to re-learn the songs now."

Grahame, who grew up in Penicuik, Midlothian, fell in love with music at an early age - inspired, he says, by the Velvet Underground and Van Morrison's album Astral Weeks.

Moving to Edinburgh, he began playing solo pub gigs under the name Sal Paradise, after the hero of Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road. The Lost Soul Band came together organically and, in 1990, began a Sunday-night residency at the old St James Oyster Bar beside Calton Hill. Word spread quickly, and by the summer as many as 200 people were cramming into the bar to bear witness to what was rapidly becoming the hardest-working band in town.

After a couple of independently released singles, the Lost Soul Band signed to Silvertone Records, then best known for signing the Stone Roses, and started playing sell-out gigs at the Edinburgh Venue, London's Borderline and other mid-scale venues. They should have been massive - but the person who signed them left the record company, and suddenly the band were stranded.

"We all have our own take on what happened," Grahame says today. "With hindsight, if we'd been around three years later, things might have changed, but at the time we didn't fit in with any particular scene. We'd invested so much time in something we were so passionate about, and it was really depressing. But, having said that: if we had crossed over, I'd probably be dead by now. I was a madman back then."

All five Lost Soul Band members have taken widely diverging paths since the group's demise. Smith played with the Joyriders and continues playing in the Vagabonds. Brian Hall moved to Germany, where he plays with a band called Sophie So. Until recently, Buchanan hadn't picked up a bass since the day the band split up. Mike Hall moved into more dance-based fare with Scuba Z and The Leisure Assistants, and had music featured on the soundtrack of the feature film Red Road.

Grahame's journey over the years has been peripatetic to say the least. Decamping to Amsterdam, Paris and then Andalucia, he ended up busking and playing New York's open-mike circuit. Eventually he moved to London, where he writes and records under the name Lucky Jim. He has released four albums, and one of his songs, You're Lovely to Me, can be heard on a television advertisement for Kingsmill bread.

"Suddenly people like DJ and composer David Holmes are on the phone telling me how much they love the album," says Grahame. "Stuff like that had never happened before. I'd been in the wilderness. But I've got myself into a position where things are finally happening for me, which is why it's OK now to go back to Lost Soul Band stuff. Who knows? We might even do it again in another few years." He laughs. "If anyone's still interested in dredging up my past 25 years later, that's fine by me." The Lost Soul Band play the Picture House, Edinburgh, on Sunday, December 28, and King Tut's Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow, on Tuesday, December 30.