IDLEWILD are to play their only mainland UK festival date at the Purbeck Folk Festival in August.

The Scottish band released their last album Post Electric Blues in 2009 and since then frontman Roddy Woomble has released two solo albums, while guitarist Rod Jones has released material under his own name and with his band The Birthday Suit, most recently A Hollow Hole Of Riches in March.

The band used Twitter to announce they were about to start recording a new album earlier this year and have since announced a date at the tiny Iona Village Hall Music Festival in July and a series of acoustic dates in the Highlands and Islands in October, making the festival at Langton Matravers their only English date confirmed so far.

Running over the Bank Holiday weekend, August 21 to 24 on a 600-acre sheep farm in the heart of the beautiful Isle of Purbeck, the Festival – which won the Fatea Music Award for Countryside Festival Of The Year – is four days of fine music, great food, fancy dress, comedy, film and magic on Dorset’s stunning Jurassic Coastline.

Idlewild join previously announced headliners Lloyd Cole, Eddi Reader, The South, Chris Wood and Emily Barker & the Red Clay Halo.

Roddy said: “These are not ‘comeback’ gigs and I hope people don’t think that they are.

“To me anyway, it’s much more an opportunity to open the songbook again – to revisit and re-imagine old songs, to play new songs and ideas, and generally just have some fun singing and playing, in a relaxed, all-acoustic way in some lovely (and unusual) venues and places.”

Idlewild formed in 1995 and have released six studio albums to date including the breakthrough 100 Broken Windows (1999), The Remote Part (2002), which spawned the hit singles You Held The World In Your Arms and American English and Warnings/Promises (2005) with the top 20 single Love Steals Us From Loneliness.

Weekend tickets (Friday to Sunday) for the folk festival include free camping and are on sale at £90 (£45 12-17 years, £10 4-11 years, under 4s free).

Day camping is available on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday at £10 a night on arrival. A limited number of Festival day tickets will also be available.

Call 023 8071 1818 or see purbeckfolk.co.uk