Oh, the weather outside is frightful.

But without these perishing winter months, we wouldn't have Kate Bush's 50 Words For Snow, Love and Money's Winter, Captain Beefheart's Steal Softly Thru Snow, or Foreigner's Cold As Ice. Imagine such a bleak pop landscape. And nor would we have Wintersong, a sonic celebration of the shady days of winter that takes place at Glasgow's Platform on Saturday.

Featuring performances from Admiral Fallow's Louis Abbott, Scottish Album of the Year (SAY) Award winner RM Hubbert, alt-folk topographer Alasdair Roberts and English pop diviners Grumbling Fur, among others, Wintersong is set to explore the myriad elements (real and imagined) of the cold season: prevailing darkness, hibernation, frosted landscapes, biting cold, barren horizons and the promise of brighter times to come.

Also playing are local unplugged bass sage Howie Reeve, Northumbrian folk maven The Horse Loom, Sussex instrumentalist Plinth and avant-folk alchemist Richard Youngs. Having previously released albums entitled Summer Wanderer and Autumn Response, Youngs is set to debut a brand-new, winter-inspired set at Wintersong.

Flamenco-punk sorcerer Hubbert will also unveil new work composed for Wintersong. This marks the Glasgow guitarist's first new material since the Ampersand Trilogy LPs, which bagged him last year's SAY Award, for 13 Lost and Found, and a further SAY short-list nod this year for Breaks & Bone.

"I've always loved the winter landscape, particularly in Scotland," says Hubbert. "It's that juxtaposition between extreme beauty and brutality. It looks really amazing when you drive past in your car, but I also know that if I stayed out there overnight it would kill me," he says with a laugh.

"And that's reflected in my music quite often: the subject matter can be quite brutal; but at the same time, melodically and musically, it can be quite beautiful. Quite hopeful as well."

The Ampersand Trilogy sought to articulate Hubbert's chronic depression, grief and loss (the death of his parents; the breakdown of his marriage and friendships), and while Wintersong ushers in a new - and more abstract - body of work, its roots are not so far removed from Ampersand.

"I've been getting quite interested in the parallels winter has with depression, in terms of the patterns, and cycles, and constant darkness," he says. "Coming up to Christmas was always hard after my parents died. And it's also like chronic depression, in that it always comes back. There's something oddly welcoming about it."

Winter too, of course, holds the promise of renewal. "That's the thing - the cycle always gets better," Hubbert brightens. "The turning point is the darkest point. "

Grumbling Fur's Daniel O'Sullivan echoes Hubbert's thoughts on the winter cycle. "I've been reading [American mythologist] Joseph Campbell lately, and he talks about this perennial situation where you have to confront some concept of birth and death and renewal, or resurrection," he says. "Some people have trouble with the winter, because it correlates with the dying of all the physical, natural organisms around us. But it also has a promise of rebirth, and that sustains us. "

Does winter fall into a certain pattern of creativity (or lack of) for O'Sullivan? "Yeah, it's the time when you can afford to be a bit more hermetically sealed off, because it's cold, and what better way to while away the hours, than to be inspired and working? And of course, it's a classic Goth tendency too - you slightly resent the summer months because you're surrounded by solar-powered, extroverted people," he says with a laugh.

"But if you're a sensitive, slightly more reclining artist, the winter months tend to be more aligned with your practice. I'm good with my own solitude."

O'Sullivan notes that his music has long been described as "wintery", and the uncanny pop realms invoked by Grumbling Fur - at once both familiar and alien - could be aligned with winter's transformation of known landscapes and figures (people become enshrouded, bowed down, in silhouette).

"The idea of portals into the banal, and seeing an alternate side of the ordinary. And it's funny how people can be polarised by the seasons, not just physically - they can have a very different emotional disposition too. But Alex and I are moody beings all year round," quips O'Sullivan.

Grumbling Fur have wintery-sounding song titles like Clear Path and All The Rays, but O'Sullivan suggests their Platform set is likely to plough a less literal furrow. "I think our response to a Wintersong festival theme is being present and engaging with the surroundings, artists, mood and vibe," he says.

Hubbert's work for Wintersong will feature a half hour, semi-improvised composition which will inform his next album. The piece is currently unfinished, because - true to the season - he has been floored by a cold. "Actually, it depends how I recover this week - my performance might just be 30 minutes of me coughing," Hubbert offers. "I suppose that would sum up my actual winter much better than anything I could write."

l Wintersong: Platform, Easterhouse Glasgow, from 5pm om Saturday. A bus leaves Monorail in the city centre (King's Court) at 4.30pm. www.platform-online.co.uk