By day, paramedics Matthew Searles and Mark Durham are busy saving lives across south London, but by night they have a very different past time.

Just like Bruce Wayne, Peter Parker and Clark Kent, the pair transform themselves into the lead singer and drummer of alternative Croydon rock band Kobayashi, who play at the Scream Lounge this Friday.

"It's one of those weird things," says Searles.

"I have always taken jobs that have shift work as that allows me to pursue music, it just happens that this job is quite an important and interesting one.

"I guess I have an exciting job by day and then get to do rock music at night, sometimes the other way around.

"It's pretty great."

Kobayashi, named after a character in film Usual Suspects, have been together for four years but only released their debut album at the end of 2009, having spent two years recording it in the studio.

"The recording took an extremely long time for a variety of reasons," says Searles.

"One of the main ones was we couldn't leave it alone "Rather than reach a point where we said that's great and as good as it is going to get, we kept going back to the studio and tweaking bits and pieces of it.

"We are incredibly pleased with it now though, it reflects the time we took to make it and the obsession we had with getting it right.

"For me it is 11 alternative rock tracks.

"We write the music with what we hear and to us it's pop music but it is getting compared to some really varied types like Muse and lots of progressive rock.

"It's also been likened to dance and electronica music and that's nice but we didn't deliberately pursue a sound that is anything else than what were hear in our heads."

Kobayashi, Bang Bangs and Los, Scream Lounge, South End, February 12, 8pm, £3. Call 020 8667 0155 or visit myspace.com/screamstudios.