The Subways.

Charlotte Cooper, bassist and one-third of English garage rock trio The Subways, isn’t sure why her band waited eight years between U.S. tours. But she is sure that if she, vocalist Billy Lunn, and drummer Josh Morgan didn’t come here now, fans might be left waiting eight more years.

“We’ve tried to make it happen before and for whatever reason, the tours [have] fallen through,” said Cooper. “It’s quite a difficult process for a smaller band like us in the UK to get over to the U.S. It takes quite a lot of preparation and financing to make it happen.”

While The Subways, whose biggest American hit “Rock and Roll Queen” comes from their 2005 debut Young For Eternity, may be a small band, they have retained a cult following through the strength of hard-driving anthems and chaotic live shows. Last year, the trio released their fourth album, a self-titled affair, which got its American release earlier this month. Led by Lunn’s inspiration from the early songwriting process, they also recorded an EP of acoustic material, with some of their older songs and two covers, including the Deftones’ “Risk.”

Just don’t expect to hear anything acoustic at their stop at The Chapel on Saturday. After being gone for so long, they want to get right into the plugged-in songs their fans have been waiting for.

“After the first show [of the tour], it felt like a big victory,” Cooper said. “Like we’re finally here, can’t quite believe it.”

An appearance on American television — The OC — cemented The Subways’ early career as an act to watch, as well as when Glastonbury festival producer Michael Eavis tapped the still-unsigned band for a performance in 2004. Brothers Lunn and Morgan grew up on grunge and punk and later added Cooper, Lunn’s longtime girlfriend, to the lineup. The band made its San Francisco debut in 2006 at Popscene, a show Cooper still remembers vividly.

“People were dancing in front of us and it was one of those stages [that] is not really a stage; it was on the floor,” she recalled. “It was really cool.”

A sophomore album, All Or Nothing, followed three years later with production from frequent Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, and Garbage producer Butch Vig. The time was difficult for Lunn and Cooper, who split up following the album’s release. While The Subways continued to headline in the UK following the release of Money And Celebrity in 2011, their third album didn’t make much noise in the U.S.

For their self-titled fourth record, which they crowdsourced, the trio recorded and produced themselves. That led to numerous delays and an 18-month process from start to finish. The time was often broken up by tours and recalibrations as they targeted their sound. They also decided to re-record two songs from their debut; “We Get Around” and “I’m In Love And It’s Burning In My Soul.”

The older songs came first and proved to be an inspiration for everything that followed, Cooper said. The band opened its own studio (which would later inspire the acoustic EP) a short distance from where the three members grew up, 30 miles north of London. It was a far cry from their first two albums, recorded in Liverpool and Los Angeles, but it felt right.

The overriding theme of the album, as demonstrated on “We Get Around,” is the band’s alienation from the music industry. Trading vocals, Lunn and Cooper defiantly slam the establishment. On “Taking All The Blame,” meanwhile, the two reflect on and analyze their past relationship. The song is one of the poppier on the album, but the emotion remains raw.

Yet just as the band went on the road to tour the new album in 2015, they suffered a setback when Morgan, who had been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome several years earlier, began to experience panic attacks and stage fright while performing. He missed more than a month of touring before rejoining The Subways.

“He went back and saw a therapist who really helped him and gave him techniques to help deal with being on stage and being on tour, and since then it’s been really, really good,” Cooper said.

While the difficulty of being so far away from home made the three pause to consider what might happen if Morgan became uncomfortable, they decided to come together anyway; the same way they make all their major decisions, Cooper said. With Lunn about to begin an English major education at The University of Cambridge, the band will be at home working on a follow-up record for the next three years.

“I think we felt that if we didn’t come to the U.S. now, no one’s going to wait for us for 15 years,” she said. “That kind of set us up for the future.”

Bonus Q&A with Cooper:

How is your tour going so far? Is everything going according to plan? Are you happy? Or do you wish anything had been done differently?

It is awesome so far. We are having the best time, all of the shows have been really cool. There’s a band on tour with us from Manchester in the UK called PINS, and they’re incredible. We’re having a lot of fun with them, it’s great to see those guys every day. We’ve had some really good local bands on first, too and so every evening is like a load of fun, it’s not just our sets that we enjoy, it’s watching the other bands as well. Every day is just a cool day.

You just released a five some acoustic EP, with some older tracks and a couple of covers. How did that come about and who picked the songs? 

That’s almost entirely Billy. He really enjoys playing acoustic guitar; he does quite a lot of acoustic solo shows and a lot of our songs originate with Billy and his acoustic guitar. He really enjoys taking our songs back to that kind of natural first state that they’re in and also there’s a few covers on there which is something that he enjoys too.

Will there be any acoustic songs in the set list that you’re performing right now? Or is that just a separate thing?

There’s nothing in the set list, although sometimes people shout out for things, and we play them. “Strawberry Blonde” is one that seems to get requested quite a lot, so we sometimes play that. Although we play it electrically, it’s probably one of our more acoustic kind of softer songs. We kind of wanted to make a real rock and roll set for this U.S. tour.

Follow writer Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.