Playing for just over an hour, the band performed a number of tracks of tracks from their just-released fifth album A Hundred Million Suns, interspersed with old favourites like 'Chasing Cars', 'Final Straw' and their breakthrough hit 'Run'.

The Gate is currently running Brian Friel's new version of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, and the band played using the play's set as a backdrop. "Do you like the special set we've built for you?" frontman Gary Lightbody quipped. "This is actually a spot-on replica of [bassist] Pablo's front porch!"

Midway through the show an enterprising student threw a yellow 'No To Fees' T-shirt onto the stage. To the delight of his screaming female fans, Lightbody - who's obviously been studying hard in 'rock showman school' - stripped off the shirt he was wearing and wore it for the rest of the gig.

The band also played the obscure 'On-Off' as a special tribute to their Irish fans. "Ireland got us first" Lightbody explained, gratefully. "We were playing to 500 people in Dublin when we were still playing to 25 people everywhere else. So thank you!"

After the Gate gig, it was straight to Dublin Airport where band and a select group of journalists flew by private jet to Belfast, for an 8PM show in the Empire.

During the flight, Lightbody spoke briefly to Hot Press about the band's somewhat bizarre encounter with stand-in host Gerry Ryan on last Friday's Late Late Show. "That was extremely weird," he laughed. "They were meant to go through the interview with us before the show. It's just as well they didn't . . . I don't think we would've been brave enough to stay!"

The set list was radically chopped and changed for the Belfast show, after which band and journalists again headed to the airport for a midnight flight to Edinburgh. Snow Patrol will play the city's Assembly Hall at lunchtime today, before flying down to London for an 8pm gig in the Bloomsbury Theatre.

Speaking exclusively to Hot Press, recently married drummer Jonny Quinn said, "We're delighted with the way it's going so far. We've got most of the new album rehearsed so we're just hopefully gonna try the new songs out live. We can always gauge by the audience reaction whether a song is gonna work out or not in a live context long-term so these are important gigs for us. And great fun, too! It's great to be playing shows again.

"After this, we're heading off on a promo trip to Australia - some small gigs and TV. Then we're heading to America for some radio and TV. There's gonna be a full UK tour in February and March. After that we'll be playing wherever they'll have us!"

Hot Press will carry a full report of the Take Back The Cities tour in the next issue, out November 5th.