To remind you of the origin of the idea: This first melody later gave its name to a feature film. It was released in 2014. God help the girl was Murdoch’s debut and only feature film. The idea came to him spontaneously and quickly became a much bigger project than he had initially expected. “It was like I had opened a window through which a different kind of music came in. I started putting together more and more songs sung by a female singer and then she became a kind of character,” he explained.

What started as a strange song in his head, sung by someone other than himself, morphed into other characters, a plot and an entire cinematic world to live in. “I kept putting them aside, and then during a break from touring in 2006, I sat down with them all and started writing a script to bring them all together.”

The production of God help the girl was refreshing. Working with this character, who took the form of Eve, a young girl who left a mental hospital, made new friends and formed a band, took Murdoch into a whole new process in which he was more of a composer now that he was no longer the subject. “That was the fun part,” he said, recounting a summer in which he composed songs in the morning, worked on the script in the afternoon and used each evening to watch more and more films, taking inspiration from the likes of John Hughes, New Wave classics and cheesy musicals.

“I think it was liberating to do things in a different way,” he added. “It’s almost like I heard it all, whether it was my situation and my feelings or processing it through the music. It was almost like I could step back and paint a little picture.”

The picture he painted is beautiful. The end result of God help the girl is a delightfully cute musical where scenes are filled with Wes Anderson-style pastel imagery and every still frame could be an artistic snapshot. Packed with thoughtful little touches that elevate the entire film with either sentimentality or silliness, its finish is polished but not overdone, retaining the liberating, DIY vibe that defines it.

“It took us five years to get there, but then we only had five weeks to shoot the film,” said Murdoch. “We were pushing trolleys with cameras through the West End of Glasgow and running around trying to keep to the schedule and keep to the tiny budget,” he recalls with a fond smile. “It was a bit hectic.”

He remains modest about his role at the centre of the project. There’s no denying that a project of this magnitude, with a soundtrack of songs and a screenplay he wrote himself, all contributing to an adventurous musical film directed by a first-time director, is a triumph that Murdoch can be incredibly proud of. But all of his gratitude and credit goes to him, especially to his trio of leads.

“I think the actual directing was the part I was most unsure of,” he said. “But I was confident with the guys and there was an understanding between them and me. They were very confident about the characters; they knew them, so I knew I didn’t have to direct them too much, and that was fun.”

Emily Browning brought Eve to life, finally realising the character he had first envisioned almost a decade earlier. “She was so professional and I could really rely on her to make everything better,” he said of the actress. The film also starred Olly Alexander as James, with Murdoch playing a role in creating the future Years and Years pop star. His memories of Alexander’s early career are incredibly important to him, saying: “It’s clear he had music in every vein of his body. And I would love to write a musical just for him one day, you know, because he’s so versatile and so much fun to work with.” The third part of the film’s charismatic unit was Hannah Murray as Cassie, with Murdoch smiling at the memory of her passion for the joyous project, having just returned from her dark role in Skin; “I think she really loved it God help the girl.”

I loved God help the girland I still do. Ever since I first saw the film as a teenager, after seeing stills from it on Tumblr, the project has remained one of my favorites. When I tell Murdoch this, he seems overjoyed, filled with a kind of abiding relief that the film has found its target audience. He tells me that it originally failed to do so because of a botched distribution and marketing plan. “They tried to sell it to Belle and Sebastian fans and Guardian readers, who were basically 40-year-old guys. They said, ‘That film wasn’t funny. I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand what it was about. Are you going to make it again?'” he said, recalling poor reviews and early screenings.

And he added: “But when we went to Sundance and people actually saw the film without prejudice and without it being sold only to Belle and Sebastian fans, when the right audience, young people and women, saw it, they understood it.”

Murdoch, however, was more than used to having to focus on the fans he cared about and his own pride in a project. While the film existed outside the world of Belle and Sebastian from the start, its release brought him back to his own origins. “I had the same experience when my band was first formed. The mainstream press hated us. They thought we were weak and trivial,” he said.

“But that was fine with me. I said to myself, it doesn’t matter. We’ll just keep making records, and if there are people who want to see us, we’ll build our audience from there. And that was the case with the film too.”

Just like the band, which developed into one of the most iconic and popular indie groups ever, God help the girl did the same and found his own cult of fans who, despite all their sentimental, cutesy power, still love the film and its music, even ten years after its release.

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