A black SUV pulls up outside a brand new office block on a hill that used to be part of Glasgow’s northern badlands. Out leap two shaven-headed men with minders and impressive suits.

Is this the Taggart episode where Latvian people-traffickers meet the yuppie property developer? No. It’s Pat and Greg Kane, also known as 1980s pop group Hue and Cry, arriving for a meeting at their management company.

Welcome to the music business circa 2008, where nothing is quite what it seems. Having contributed Labour of Love and Looking for Linda to the soundtrack of the 1980s, the Kane brothers had turned their back on performing in favour of politicking, journalism and theorising (Pat) and the management and technical side of the music business (Greg). Then came that most 21st century career enhancer, the reality-talent show.

The Kanes signed up for Hit Me Baby One More Time on ITV, performed Beyonce’s Crazy in Love (after Greg was talked into it by Pat, the producer and Vernon Kay) and were just beaten by Shakin’ Stevens.

Since then, Glasgow’s young hopefuls have been forced to seek another rock dad to film their gigs and give them firm but fair career guidance. Broadsheet literary editors seeking a review of some bonkers new theory have been asked to look elsewhere. Twenty-odd years after they last troubled the charts, Hue and Cry are back as a functioning, gigging, recording band.

The borderline-bouffant hairstyles of the old days are long gone. The music is a similar pop-soul hybrid. What has really changed is the band’s relationship with their fans. Instead of relying on a record company to put them on tour, get them on the radio and sell their records, the Kane brothers have taken everything in-house and onto the internet. Via their website, Hue and Cry Music Club, they do everything an old-school record company used to do. And more. And without charging themselves handsomely for the privilege.

It appears to have worked. They have sold out every venue on their British tour (apart from Inverness for some reason) and are playlisted on Radio 2, the babyboomers aural sanctuary. This week it was announced that they will support the Memphis soul legend Al Green in the Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow, next month.

The fans found out first, thanks to the website, which is more of an on-line community. You can register to see the band play live in House of Fraser stores and discuss shows you saw back in the days when they supported Madonna at Wembley stadium.

You can share your thoughts on the new album, Open Soul, and watch practically every clip of footage ever recorded. Soon you will even be able to contribute your own film clips, which Greg will edit into the footage in a “fan cam” slot. All for free.

“The net is a crazy neo-communistic space where sharing is more important than owning, and more people get a say than ever had a say before,” says Pat, who has been fascinated with the internet since its inception. “It’s this big common space. So what relationship do you want to have with the people who love your music? A generous one. One where there’s lots of communication back and forth, where there’s lots on the table before you sell a record.”

Sleek and professional, apart from a refreshing absence of pop-up exhortations to lose weight and save money on car insurance, it is pretty much all their own work.

“We do 95% of it ourselves,” says Greg, a self-confessed techno-nerd. “We interviewed a lot of net companies and it was between £10,000-£15,000 a year to do it. We looked at each other and thought, surely it can’t be that difficult. We’ve stumbled into it but the reaction has been amazing.”

An internet entrepreneur asked Greg recently: “When are you going to hit them with, ‘Geez your money’.” His reply was: “Never, it’s not about that.” And when his friend had stopped laughing, he pointed out to Greg that, when you offer so much for free, people will begin to lose trust in you. They will be looking for the catch.

There is, the brothers are quick to insist, no catch. “Monetising was never in the plan.” Greg has the grace to blush at such overt internet geek speak. “We just wanted to engage people, show off our creativity. I just like to put it out there and say, what do you think?”

One fan who signed up for the site started a forum discussion entitled: What Would You Like To Buy From Hue and Cry? It has had 40 entries so far. There are already plans for a deluxe edition of the new album, Open Soul, packaged in a hardback book, and a high-definition concert video. Both ideas came from the forum.

Greg was doubtful about the book. “I thought, ‘Nobody will buy that at £20.’ How wrong was I? Because they get all this content for free, they feel morally obliged.”

Hue and Cry fans seem to have sidestepped the venality that has polluted so much of the internet with pornography, fake watches and Viagra.

The only slight problem the brothers have experienced on the site is a fan who used a photograph of his girlfriend’s tattooed bottom as his profile picture.

Pat sent him an email suggesting this might be inappropriate. He came straight back, full of apologies, then replaced the picture with a Jack Vettriano painting of a man in a trilby, gazing at a woman in suspenders. Again, Pat pointed out that this was not on.

More apologies. He is now represented by a “decorous” Vettriano, of a lady in a hat. And that is as badly behaved as Hue and Cry’s fans get.

For the Kanes, a long break from the music industry has allowed technology to catch up with their interests and preoccupations.

“We wrote a song about this, in 1989,” says Pat. “It’s called the Only Thing (More Powerful Than The Boss), all about a computer religion, people coming together over networks, and over vast distances, to empower themselves rather than to do their bosses’ bidding. We’ve been thinking about this for ages. Now it seems as though history has caught up with the story.”

But suggest to the brothers that the website might have become more important than the music and the temperature in the room drops.

“The gigs are pretty epiphanal and pretty intense,” says Pat. “And now all that ball of energy has somewhere to go. It has somewhere to commemorate the experience, to elaborate the experience — there’s this congregation of people who come together in this temporary space to make this experience permanent.” They both beam broadly. Pat and Greg Kane have finally found enough bandwidth to feel at home.

Hue and Cry appear at The Hard Rock Cafe in Edinburgh, October 15, to raise funds for breast cancer at the Pinktober festival; www.hueandcry.co.uk

Explore Music

• CD Reviews

• Live Reviews

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of 2008
• Hitler and the Downfall mash-ups
• Britney Spears: The Circus