A newspaper group’s press officer was thrown out of America after a visa wrangle with immigration officials.

But rather than being caught out on a journalistic assignment, Archant’s Lisa Horton was in fact heading for Texas to play at a music festival.

Lisa, a former reporter with the Norwich Evening News and Anglia Advertiser, is the lead singer of six-piece indie band Bearsuit who were due to play their first US gig at the South by Southwest Festival, in Austin.

She and two other band members were told to get on the next flight home by immigration but the other three were allowed to stay and managed some interviews and acoustic gigs.

Lisa (white boots) with Bearsuit

Lisa, who is also deputy editor of Archant Network magazine, said: “The South by Southwest Festival showcases hundreds of musical acts from around the globe and is a huge event so we’re all really gutted.

“But we could have been banned from visiting America for five years if we had not agreed to come straight back on the next flight.”

The band left Gatwick and landed in Minneapolis where the problems started.

Lisa added: “We were not going to get paid for performing at the South by Southwest Festival so we hoped we would be alright without visas.

“But we did have wristbands to go to the festival and immigration took this as if we were getting paid. To work in America you need to have a visa which we did not have.

“Initially, we tried to bluff our way through by saying that we were going to visit friends over there.

“But they questioned us for so long that it all came out that we were in a band and performing at the festival.”

The band is hoping the setback will just prove to be just a temporary blip as they are due to play in New York in October.

Their single More Soul than Wigan Casino has been getting airplay on Radio 1, and XFM, and was named single of the week in The Guardian and vinyl of the week in NME, as well as earning best video accolade in Is This Music magazine.

The band’s third album Oh:io is released in America next week. For more information about Bearsuit visit their MySpace page.