I’ve heard it said that Gloria Mundi were the spark that lit the flame of goth icons Bauhaus. Apparently it was after gigging with them that Bauhaus completely changed their music and presentation.

Gloria Mundi’s stage performance was heavy on visuals, with (it says here) “underlying story-themes of isolation, individuality, sexuality and aggression.”

I don’t feel any of that from their forgettable debut single Fight Back / Do It! – a shouty, punky affair which lurks in my collection like a guilty secret. But you get a sense of it in its incantatory follow-up, Glory Of The World, with its ominous chants and pounding drums, its serpentine guitars and parping sax.

There was nothing gothy about my interview with the two principals of Gloria Mundi – Eddie Francis (stage name Eddie Maelov) and Sunshine Patteson a year or two after the band broke up in 1979.

It was at their home and they conducted the interview as if it were an art performance: elaborately dressed in vintage clothing, they made a big palaver out of serving me afternoon tea and were excessively, performatively polite, answering questions in clipped tones like a male-female Gilbert & George.

I’m pretty sure I was unaware at the time that the duo, who had reinvented themselves as a synthpop duo, Eddie & Sunshine, had previously been in Gloria Mundi, or that I actually had their first single.

The pair were joined in Gloria Mundi by a saxophonist who went by “CC”, a bass player called Ice (real name Roland) and a guitarist who called himself Beethoven (aka Pete Vas), which gives you a sense of the thin line they trod between “theatrical” and “pretentious.”

The drummer, Mike Nichols, must have missed the memo and I’m hoping he’s not the music journalist of my acquaintance who shares the name.

I’m not sure Gloria Mundi (or Eddie & Sunshine) left much of a mark but l read that CC subsequently contributed a memorable saxophone solo to the Ultravox song Hiroshima Mon Amour. The others disappeared from view; mine, anyway.