Getting noticed was always gonna be a struggle for Tegan and Sara. I mean, what with that whole ‘singing-identical-twin-Canadian-lesbian’ thing n’ all… It’s kinda been done to death!

Really though, the most astonishing thing about Tegan and Sara is not the above (well, actually it kind of is), but the fact that last year they released their fifth album, The Con, and they’re still virtually unknown in the UK.

Signed to Neil Young’s Vapor Records and having toured with The Killers (Brandon Flowers is a massive fan) and Ryan Adams – they’ve even had a song covered by The White Stripes (“massively flattering and a validation from our peers”)… Yet most Brits have never heard of them.

It’s not something that bothers Sara though, or was that Tegan… Hang on a minute? “We want it to happen organically in England,” she says (Sara). “We want it be like a natural progression.

“Last time we were in London we played Koko and now we’re doing Shepherd’s Bush so we feel like it’s happening quite naturally and slowly which is good.

“There’s no reason to go overload. We are patient. We’ve been doing it for a long time and as long as there’s a few more people each time then that’s good.”

Tegan and Sara have been doing it a long time. They made their first two albums at high school, and in 2007 released their fifth record to date. A more assured album than anything they’ve previously released, Sara says The Con is the record she’s most proud of thus far…

“It was just a totally different experience,” she tells me. “We were actively trying to mix up the cycle and the process so it doesn‘t get stale.

“It was totally different and I think that is reflected in the end cycle. We weren’t really focusing on making it sound different. We wanted it to be an organic thing and let it happen naturally.”

And how do you feel when you look back on the first few albums? “Well, they were done when we were like 18, so sometimes I feel so deeply embarrassed and ashamed about them that it takes everything inside of me to stop myself from knocking on people’s doors and asking for them back,” she laughs.

The current album is catchy indie pop with acoustic and electro elements. It’s somewhere between Robots In Disguise and Avril Lavigne, and though the girls are older now – both nearly 28 – there’s a slight feel of teenage angst about the songs.

Being both openly gay and at the same time identical twins is something Sara feels has at times over shadowed the music… and the related issues are perhaps the source of some of the frustrations at play within the music.

“I think it does detract from the music,” she tells me. “But we made a decision early on that we would be visible and not hide from anything. We were writing pop songs and love songs and we were asking people to believe what we were writing and it felt somehow disingenuous to avoid or not disclose something that kind of seems obvious anyway.

“And anyway it just makes me feel comfortable. I wouldn’t like feeling that there was something that I would have to hide.

“Also I always just say that our music is not our sexuality, we are our sexuality. And I think we have been able to transcend some of the stereotypes and avoid being pigeon-holed and I also feel like our music generally speaks to most different people regardless of what your gender or sexuality is. I try not to get too bummed out about having to talk about it because it is who I am and I am totally proud of who I am.”

Being gay is one thing. It can lead to prejudice. But Tegan and Sara have also experienced the drawbacks that being a woman in the music business can entail.

“I think it (sexism) probably exists in all walks of life. I think there is just a lot of institutionalised sexism in our world and somehow in a weird way you may not notice it but you are always battling against it.

“I’ve noticed it not necessarily in how many female fronted bands there are or whatever, but for me what we talked about when we started working in the industry was the fact that there just really wasn’t a lot of women around.

“You just didn’t see very many female tour managers or sound engineers or lighting engineers or record execs or whatever, and I’ve actually seen a lot of growth in those areas over the last 10 years, which is really positive.”

Inspired in the 90s by the likes of Ani De Franco and Courtney Love (“They were alternative and I felt alternative so I wanted to be like them”), these days Tegan and Sara are concerned with being positive role models and inspiring future generations. Sarah tells me the band aim to carry a torch not just for women but for everyone who wants to be “open, ambitious and confident”.

“We enjoy our music and we just want people to see that,” she says. “I feel like we took a lot from the women we looked up to and now we’re just trying to give it back.”

Tegan and Sara are not linked by any of the usual identical twin ‘I feel her pain’ type supernatural telepathy. Clearly, they’re close but the Mitchell Brothers they’re not… They even live in separate cities.

“I guess people get really surprised that we live so far away from each other,” says Sara, “but then when you explain that we tour constantly - like 200 days a year - they understand.

“Also having the internet and being able to record at home quite sufficiently kind of eliminates the need for the collaborative process sometimes. I think having our own space is something that naturally works very well for us. We both seem to work well from isolated spaces; and we don’t always want to be in the same room together working. It really hasn’t been a problem so far.”