Many great artists – including of course Jane Austen – came to Bath and it helped inspire them to produce some of their best work.

To an illustrious list of writers, artists and painters, the city can now add the name of long-standing punk heroes The Stranglers who have been busy writing new material in Bath ahead of a major new tour and album.

The band's association with Bath and its surrounding areas has long been established. Former lead singer, Hugh Cornwell, who himself played in the city twice last year in his solo guise, has a home in Box, Wiltshire, and he regards the city and its surroundings as his out-of-London base.

As for his former band, The Stranglers, this has long been seen as an area of fertile ground for what they do with all of their rehearsing and recording done at the studio owned by their manager, Sil Wilcox, in Norton St Phillip.

Now those Bath-Stranglers connections have been getting even closer because over the winter months, bass guitarist Jean-Jacques Burnel (known universally as JJ) and his song writing partner, guitarist Baz Warne, have spent their time in leafy Lansdown writing new material for their future studio album.

For the former bad boys of pop to have been renting a home in the gentile arena of Lansdown may seem unusual – but then again The Stranglers are never a band who have conformed to stereotype.

As proof of that even though the band are now in their fifth decade as an exciting and original live act, they are still open to new ideas and on Monday (February 22) they are set to release their first ever download-only single.

The single market has been a lucrative area for the band who have scored a huge list of top 40 singles including well-known tracks such as No More Heroes, Five Minutes, Golden Brown and Always The Sun. But this time the band have abandoned the concept of releasing a new single on CD or vinyl and gone for the huge download market.

JJ Burnel explains that this is a new departure for the band – and he will be interested to see how it develops . . .

"The song itself is one thing, how you access it these days is very different," he said.

"It will be interesting to see how it turns out but I think the one problem with downloading a track is that you don't develop a loyalty or a brand loyalty to whoever creates it. You may like the song, fair enough, but you don't get in under the skin of the whole thing a by just downloading one song. You may not even know the name of the artist".

Despite that JJ and the band are confident that the song itself – Retro Rockets – which is about the current state of the music scene is one that their fans will love. And they are hopeful that it will attract an even wider audience as well …

"I'm very pleased with it, it's a good Stranglers rocker" he said. "The trouble is we're living in times where everything should be karaoke/X Factor and I think some Radio 2 DJs have rejected it as it's a bit too rough for them.

"The good thing is we did three sell-out gigs in Greece recently and when we've played it, the audience didn't stop rocking. That's a very good sign".

The new single and another new track – I Don't See The World As You Do – will both also be at the top and tail of a new compilation released on March 1 called Decades Apart. This is a career-spanning work for The Stranglers covering everything from their late 70s hits right through to some of their lesser-known but equally entertaining work from the 1990s and the noughties.

JJ admits that he and his colleagues are more inspired by creating fresh, new material – but he admits that such compilations still have a role to play.

"The thing regarding compilations is that it's really not what the band are all about. I think compilations serve a purpose for people who may want to discover us. But the greatest pleasure is in creating new material and we've been working on that, writing material in Bath for our next studio album".

That next album – which would be the follow-up to the excellent Suite 16 which was also recorded locally – is probably not due out now until 2011. That is because at this stage of their long, illustrious career The Stranglers can afford to be choosy.

As JJ says, they want to take time to make the next full studio album really special . . .

"We are working on tracks for an album at the moment but we're in no hurry to get them released until they are right. At this stage in The Stranglers' game it's got to be about quality control. One new song we've just recorded which we worked on in Bath is really cool. I'm very proud of that – but we're in no rush to get everything out."

For the next three to four weeks The Stranglers will be in a rush, however, dashing around the country on another major 16 date tour.

One of their stop-offs will be the Bristol Academy on Monday, March 8, and already the indications are that the Bristol gig – plus all the others on the tour – are selling very well.

"Our last tour turned out to be the most successful for 20 odd years and this one is already shaping up well with tickets selling well at all the venues. It is great that there is such an interest in the band and what we do and personally I just live for playing live. I retain an excitement and enthusiasm for The Stranglers – and I'm very proud of being involved with them".

So, if you do spot a black-clad Strangler walking through the streets of Bath in the next few months, may I suggest you don't interrupt him?

The chances are, he may just be composing in his head the next great Stranglers song to add to their long list of successful tracks which have been inspired and created in this most artistically inspiring of cities.