The nerds of Scottish indie have created an irrestible debut album, but Zoe Van Goey will still have to cadge a lift to their gigs

"I couldn't be in a death metal band, or a really manly band," says bespectacled and shirted drummer Matt Brennan, stating the bleeding obvious. "We did try and do a rock tune once," recalls the shy singer, keyboardist and viola player Kim Moore, "but we never played it again." Brennan, who is the most affable drummer I've ever encountered (and the only one with a PhD in the history of music journalism), apparently tried his best to be angry but "ended up sounding like Kermit the frog".

The third member of Zoey Van Goey is Michael John McCarthy, by day a sound designer and composer for theatre and by night guitarist and noisemaker in the band. Currently in the Hague playing accordion on stage in his girlfriend's show, The Art Of Swimming, a Fringe hit last year, he is evidently the go in Zoey Van Goey. "I wish he was here to put us right," says Moore at one point when she confuses black light theatre with black magic. The band have their own credentials in the theatre too, writing music and playing onstage in a National Theatre of Scotland production, Dolls, earlier this year.

Friends of Zoey Van Goey extend beyond the footlights to writers – after our interview Brennan is off for dinner with Rodge Glass and Alan Bissett – and, of course, musicians. Stuart Murdoch produced their first single, 'Foxtrot Vandals', and Paul Savage, ex-Delgados drummer who has worked with Franz Ferdinand, Mogwai and Arab Strap, produced their record in Chemikal Underground's studio. Moore plays viola with Frightened Rabbit, lends backing vocals to Murdoch's upcoming album of girl singers, and McCarthy is set to tour Japan with Alun Woodward (another ex-Delgado) and Aidan Moffat. Not bad going for three people who had never been in a band before.

"We all bumped into each other around Glasgow University," explains Moore, who is from Edinburgh but grew up in Shrewsbury. Somehow, you can't imagine this band meeting anywhere but the learned environs of a creaky old university. "Michael John was lost and I helped him. We were both being geeks and trying to look for the film library so we could volunteer and watch films for free." "Did you ever find it?" asks Brennan and nods approvingly when Moore says "yes, and we volunteered". Not long after, Brennan, who is from Canada, arrived in Glasgow and bumped into McCarthy on the same street. The following day the two of them started jamming.

"Then, one night my friends shoved me on stage at an open mic session at Nice 'n' Sleazy's," continues Moore. "It was the first time I'd ever sung in front of anyone and Matt and Michael John were there." The geeks had come together and Zoey Van Goey was born. Three years later their debut album, The Cage Was Unlocked All Along, has arrived and it's a lovely, quirky listen with sunny boy/girl harmonies and tales of hiding under the duvet, love gone sour and the apocalypse. The Belle and Sebastian influence may be there, but the offhand humour in the lyrics gives it a kick. "We want to vote for change but we cannot spot the difference / So on the couch we pray to Super Mario for deliverance," sings Moore on 'We All Hid In Basements'.

The use of anything that makes a noise when thumped or shaken helps too. They borrow Casios and drum kits from friends, scour charity shops for toy xylophones, use old guitars that forever need restrung, and tap coffee mugs with spoons. "We'll try anything," says Brennan. "We'd never touched some of the instruments on the album before, like the dulcimer or banjo. But they were lying around and we were like, 'this is the best'. That's the way we do a lot of things."

A similar beg-borrow-or-steal principle applied when they were invited to play six festivals in Scotland last year, from Rockness to T in the Park. Unfortunately, none of the band can drive and they had no money, no booking agent, no tour manager and no van. McCarthy had never even been to a music festival before. "Mostly my friends drove us," says Moore. "We got lost and stuck in the mud a lot." As well as ploughing their own money into the band – they all work full-time – they borrowed cash from their manager and got a grant from the Scottish Arts Council to make The Cage Was Unlocked All Along, which they are self-releasing and distributing. When I ask what their hopes are for the record, the answer comes quick: "To repay our debts."

Music has been a lifelong obsession for both of them. Moore's father was a music teacher. She sang along to tapes in her bedroom and studied music at university. "My first musical experience was on stage in a production of The Water Babies, playing the seventh tentacle of an octopus," she says. Brennan grew up in a Canadian town the size of Stirling listening to soul and funk and playing drums. "Kim and I were both school nerds," he says. "I was the kind of kid who at lunchtime at school would stay inside the music room and play xylophone and timpani to avoid getting beaten up. But there were other people in there, also hiding I guess."

Brennan is the storyteller of the band, very funny, unassuming and charismatic. Though he insists they write songs collaboratively, the best lyrics appear to be his and during gigs, while guitars are being tuned and Casios shifted around, he keeps the audience entertained. "Matt is an amazing storyteller, really visual," says Moore. "A lot of them tend to be about winter in Canada," he explains. I ask him for one and get Moore's favourite, "the one about the green goo in the tree". It's a brilliantly weird and poetic tale about a child up a maple tree on a school winter camping trip, ending up with gunge from a glow stick in his mouth, the green dribbles spattering the snow. "Everyone has stories," shrugs Brennan, looking embarrassed when he finishes.

The story of the band's name is another strange-and-possibly-true yarn. Zoey Van Goey, according to Brennan of course, was an Amish girl from Pennsylvania who ended up in New York in the Eighties painting with the Factory set.

She moved to Berlin, made murals and after the Wall fell, disappeared without a trace. Is it true? No answer, and Moore hides behind the album's sleeve notes and starts tittering. Is she a person? "Yeah, kind of," says Brennan. "I think she is real."

What are definitely real are the various Van Goeys who have got in touch to tell them they share a surname. "There's a Mrs Van Goey in America who writes to us a lot," says Moore. "She sent us this amazing photo of her grandfather, Karl Van Goey, and his prize-winning cabbages." One of their ambitions is to tour to America so they can meet her, adds Brennan: "We just need to find a friend with a boat."

The Cage Was Unlocked All Along is released May 11, Left In The Dark Records. The album is launched at Stereo, Glasgow, May 9 www.myspace.com/zoeyvangoey