When a band has a year as successful, incident-packed and downright surreal as the one Hurts have just had - 600,000 albums sold, 150 gigs played in 40 countries, one deranged stalker - it's customary to ask them to pinpoint the one moment where they knew they'd made it. Trouble is, Hurts have had so many moments like that, it's impossible to pick just one.

Was it winning the NME Award for Best New Band? Was it the time they found themselves showing Jay-Z magic tricks in an R&B club in Tokyo? Was it playing ping-pong with Nas? Getting taken to a strip club by gangsters in Poland? Receiving a note of congratulation from the first lady of Estonia after selling out a 4000-seat arena? 

Or was it, more simply, selling ludicrous numbers of records in countries that British bands rarely deign to visit? A few facts: Hurts' debut album 'Happiness', released in September 2010, has gone top 10 in fifteen countries, hit the top spot in two, and gone Platinum in Poland, Switzerland and Germany. In Japan, Hurts outsell Kings of Leon.

In many of these places, Hurts are not a cult band: they are a true mainstream phenomenon. In Germany, where their stirring ballad 'Stay' is currently number one on the airplay chart, the duo can't go out without bouncers on hand to control over-eager fans. Their single 'Wonderful Life' was performed by a contestant on the Greek version of 'X Factor'. In Iceland, the most requested haircut for men is "a Hurts". Indeed, in Reykjavik, Hurts have just played a 5000-seat ice-hockey arena. This in a nation of 300,000 people. One in 60 people in the country were at that gig.

And all this within a year of them playing their first gig at St Philip’s Church, in their hometown of Manchester. It's no wonder they're struggling to put it all in context.

"It's insane", says Hutchcraft of the band's international success. "Bizarre. It's exceeded our expectations tenfold. It's so funny talking about it, because it's literally unbelievable. You don't get a chance to think about it. It's hard to explain, so we often have to bring people with us, just to go: Look at this. Look what's happening."

And yet - this is not a tale of effortless overnight fame. Success may have come reasonably quickly for Hurts, but it has not come without a Herculean struggle to silence their many doubters. The duo have been called hipsters, 80s throwbacks, bandwagon-jumpers. Seizing on their slick image, critics have even unleashed the ultimate insult: ‘boy band’. Hurts take all this in good humour, knowing all that early sniping is firmly in the past.

“The thing is,” laughs Hutchcraft, “We anticipated all those criticisms. In a funny way, we knew all the insults we’d get before we heard them. But that just made us more determined. Before we were signed, for so long we sat being bludgeoned in our flat, thinking, 'Please let's get out of here'. Your ambition gets bigger the more hardship there is. We almost gave up. It got to the point where we started talking about what we were going to do with our lives. The ambition became so massive, it was extreme.”

He pauses, as if startled by the memory of what life was like back then, pre-all this: “We were fucking miserable people. It's funny to think about. That's why we wrote the music - we were miserable. Now that's changed…”

Just a bit. Hurts’ success is not solely a Continental phenomenon. They’re winning over an initially skeptical UK, too. They've sold 150,000 albums here, and in February 2011 were voted Best New Band by readers of NME. Hutchcraft says the ceremony was "one of the best nights of my life. All I learnt about music was from the people in the audience - Jarvis Cocker, Carl Barat, Dave Grohl. You're sat there and you think: What would the sixteen-year-old me do? He'd probably give me five and go, 'What the fuck's happened here?'"

For Anderson, that night felt like a turning point - a vindication of the band's singular vision, and a delicious pay-off for the years they spent on the dole, playing gigs to no-one, and feeling "fucking miserable". Indeed, during a post-Awards party, chatting to Muse's Matt Bellamy at The Ivy, Anderson had what he calls an, "overwhelming sense of perspective about what's happened to my life. To have all this success in Europe and then come home and be treated so well... We're like a good export for British pop music."

The question is: why Hurts? What is it about their surging synth-pop anthems that has bewitched people in so many different countries? They've tried to rationalise it, but neither has a definitive answer. Anderson says it's "just one of those amazing things, you can't put your finger on it," while Hutchcraft thinks there's deep well of gloom to their music that plays well in wintry climes. "In Germany, for example, they seem to like bands with a sadness to them. Bands like Placebo and Depeche Mode are huge."

Whatever the magic ingredient is, it has instilled a certain obsessiveness in Hurts' fans. This has both its good and bad sides. On the one hand the duo get showered with gifts (at every gig they play in the world, they receive flowers from a fan in Russia; in Tokyo, less sweetly, they were gifted a warm hot dog in wrapping paper). On the other, as Anderson notes, "When you make sad music you evoke extreme reactions in people. You can end up soundtracking not just their happiness, but also their despair."

Hence one disturbing experience recently when Hutchcraft was followed home by a fan, who proceeded to sit outside his flat for an entire day, banging on the door and throwing stuff at the windows. Eventually he had to call the police to get her moved on, and was so shaken by the experience he moved house. It's not the only time Hurts have engendered disturbing extremes of emotion. After a gig in Estonia, one female fan "went mental" at an aftershow party, screaming and attacking other women. It took eight bouncers to drag her out of the building.

But Hurts aren’t about to let the odd dark moment spoil what for them has become one endless pan-European celebration. As Anderson puts it: “It’s a dream scenario. Every night you come away with a story to tell your mates about. You end up in these bizarre situations..."

Such as? 

"Meeting Jay-Z was a weird one," says Hutchcraft. "I was so intimidated. I ended up showing him magic tricks. I was like, I don't really know what this is, I don't know what's happening. I'm from north Yorkshire!"

Yet there have been more low-key epiphanies too, such as hearing ‘Wonderful Life’ on the radio in Iceland, “while driving through a glacier on the way to a black beach - an incredible moment”. And the band have not lost sight of the reason they are having all these experiences: their astonishingly loyal fans.

“It's incredibly how devoted our fans are,” says Anderson, with evident pride. “All over the world, they are so committed. And the bigger it gets, the more humbling it is.”

Hutchcraft believes the devotion of Hurts fans mirrors a corresponding intensity in the way they make music. “It's testament to the strength of our vision,” he says. “People want to share in our idea of who we want to be. I know that Muse have fans like that - people who are so desperate in their devotion. It's a good thing.

“Because we got dismissed quite early, we've got fans who feel like we're in it together - they want to tell other people about it. For years we were in bands and no-one wanted to see us play. We had to try and make them want to watch us. Then all of a sudden you've got people who get it. All you want is for people to get it.”

Given the epic nature of their touring schedule, you'd expect there to have been a fair few bust-ups between the two musicians - but they insist they've only ever had one argument, since their "insanely compatible personalities" maintain a happy equilibrium It's a quality that Hutchcraft says it integral to the ongoing stability of the band: "It holds us together. When all these mental things happen, it's well good to be able to look at each other and go, 'Fuck me, this is incredible'. If you were on your own you would probably lose your mind."

So - what next? Well, more touring basically, through festival season and until at least the of 2011. In the next month alone Hurts are visiting Belgium, China, Russia, Israel, Dubai and Singapore. "It's never-ending," marvels Anderson. "But that's OK." At some point there will be a second album to write - the band admit they are starting to get "itchy feet about making new music" again. But for now, their priority is just to enjoy the "whirlwind of things" that their lives have become.

As Anderson puts it, with inarguable logic: "We get to do our dream job for a living. How could your life get any better?"