It really is amazing what you can do with time, talent, determination and a box of acoustic foam pyramid tiles.

Items two and three on that list are provided by Suse Bear and Julie Eisenstein, a 26-year-old Glaswegian and a 30-year-old Londoner who make music together under the moniker Tuff Love. The tiles, meanwhile, have helped turn a spare room in Bear's West End flat into a recording studio and it's here, in a series of prolonged evening sessions, that she and Eisenstein have written and recorded two EPs for Lost Map Records, the label run from Eigg by former Fence Collective boss Johnny Lynch.

"I've got a deaf woman upstairs and a café downstairs," Bear tells me as the three of us crowd round her kitchen table. "So after 6pm I'm pretty free to do anything, noise-wise".

They first met at a party. Bear gave Eisenstein a mix CD (it's stuck up on the kitchen wall, for some reason) and their first musical venture was as Motherless Daughters, a hobby band in which Bear layered keyboards and electronics over Eisenstein's acoustic compositions. The name was carefully chosen - Bear lost her mother when she was 21, Eisenstein when she was 15 - but the modus operandi wasn't: the heavily treated songs would have been impossible to perform live. So they never were.

For their second attempt, they changed their name, stripped back the sound, added live drums and a fuzz box, and upped the volume levels, which is when Bear became even more appreciative of her deaf neighbour. What emerged was Junk, an EP of crystalline power pop turning on harmonising voices and the tight interplay between Eisenstein's guitar and Bear's growling bass. Drums came courtesy of a roster of amenable stand-ins.

The music is collaboratively written but Bear, who studied audio technology at Glasgow Caledonian and also plays bass in Glasgow band Monoganon, is the recording whizz. Eisenstein, who came to the city in 2009 to take up a place on Glasgow University's respected creative writing course, provides most of the lyrics.

Their first gig was at Nice'N'Sleazy in Glasgow in August 2012. Their second came a day later - at Berlin's LaDIYfest event, one of a family of worldwide events celebrating feminist cultural activism. To get there on time they drove for 24 hours straight. "I think it was fine," Bear says, not sounding altogether convinced. "But it was f****** terrifying. I thought my heart was going to fall out of my chest. We basically had five songs and we played for 20 minutes."

Since then their reputation (and their set lists) have grown. Comedian Josie Long declared herself a fan by directing a video for Flamingo (from Junk) and as well as headline spots the band have toured with label boss Lynch, who performs as The Pictish Trail. On February 9 they release their second EP, Dross, on 10-inch pink vinyl. The first single from it, Slammer, has already been playlisted by BBC Radio 6 Music and a new single, That's Right, is out now.

Lynch likes Tuff Love so much he's taken to sending hand-written letters to music journalists extolling their virtues. On the basis of Junk and Dross, his efforts aren't misplaced. Tuff Love are certainly a fresh and bracing addition to Glasgow's portfolio of young bands and, as gay musicians, they promise to bring some much-needed diversity to the city's music scene too: it hasn't escaped their notice that most bands are male-dominated and that the city's wider culture is still defiantly - perhaps even proudly - macho.

For her part, Bear wants to see "more women, more queer stuff. There are so many different types of people in life, so why is it always the same type of people who are gigging?" To that end, Tuff Love are regular participants in and supporters of events organised by TYCI, a feminist collective run by women.

That said, they don't see themselves as poster girls for gay and lesbian issues. At least one song on Dross is about an ex-girlfriend, but sexuality is treated as a personal subject rather than a political one. Even that can be difficult enough, of course.

"I don't write political songs, but I don't avoid it," says Eisenstein. "I talk about things that are relevant to me and which are, I think, feminist and queer in nature. I mean I write about women quite a lot and about my personal life. There are bits here and there that discuss my sense of identity, and I think that's related to queer stuff. Just being open and honest about ourselves is quite important and I think maybe not enough people do that. But that in itself can be quite challenging."

Local lore already has it that Tuff Love formed as a grunge act. True? When I mention it there's some debate about whether the word was ever actually used, but both women admit to liking The Breeders and Riot Grrrl pioneers Bikini Kill. Bear also has soft spots for Elastica and cult LA nerd-rockers Weezer. But some of the other adulatory critical comparisons Tuff Love are drawing, to 1980s all-female Edinburgh fourpiece The Shop Assistants and the bands of the so-called C86 indie pop movement, do seem wide of the mark.

"A lot of people say C86, and I just don't understand what that means," says Eisenstein. That's that one nailed, then.

Bear, meanwhile, says she had never even heard The Shop Assistants' music until very recently. In fact, she adds, Abba are probably her biggest influence. "They just wrote really concise pop songs, perfectly laid out. I listened to Abba Gold for two years on repeat. It was all I listened to. I used to close my eyes and imagine I was in the band."

Which one were you then?

"Probably the blonde one," she says, then waits a beat. "Not the girls, though."

Tuff Love play Sneaky Pete's in Edinburgh tonight and Nice'N'Sleazy in Glasgow on Friday. Dross is released on February 9