Red Hot Chilli Pipers at Tollygunge Club. Picture by Aranya Sen

Bands are often noted for their flamboyance. So it was with the Red Hot Chilli Pipers, a Scottish “bag rock” band, which performed at the Tollygunge Club on Friday evening.

Dressed in black kilts and red socks, the band surprised the audience, both with its musical repertoire and its stage attire. It experimented with a wide array of sounds — traditional folk elements from Scotland, rock, marching tunes and peppy world music — and with Scottish tunes fused with cult rock anthems.

Like any other concert in the city, this too witnessed much hooting and clapping and swaying hands with lighters. What looked effortless on stage — the smooth coordination between the band members, their energetic movement and the deft creation of melody — has actually been achieved over years of hard work. After an impromptu jam session at the Calcutta School of Music the following day, founder member Stuart Cassells — a winner of BBC Radio Scotland’s Young Traditional Musician award and the first holder of a musical degree in bagpipes from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama — talked about the band. It also features Grade 1 pipers Kevin MacDonald and Willie Armstrong, world-champion snare drummer Steven Graham along with Malcolm McEwan and Steven Black on percussion, Chris Russell on keyboard and the funky Gregor James on guitar.

Even a musical journey has its share of obstacles. The Pipers’ objective is to popularise the bagpipe — long considered to be a “formal” instrument — to a global audience. The band has had to survive the frown of puritans, some of whom alleged that pibroch, the 17th century art music of Highland Bagpipes, was being commercialised, pressure from music labels to trade the traditional for a modern sound as well as the challenge to keep an audience engaged in an act that makes very little use of words.

But the journey has also been rewarding. It has helped the band discover new audiences. Be it Paris, New York, Dubai, Bangkok or Calcutta, the sight of excited faces shouting for an encore is what makes Cassells and his band mates forget the miseries of the road — jet-lag, empty hotel rooms and the memories of a distant home.