Abstract We introduce a bi-Hamiltonian hierarchy on the cotangent bundle of the real Lie group GL ( n , C ) , and study its Poisson reduction with respect to the action of the product group U(n) × U(n) arising from left- and right-multiplications. One of the pertinent Poisson structures is the canonical one, while the other is suitably transferred from the real Heisenberg double of GL ( n , C ) . When taking the quotient of T * GL ( n , C ) we focus on the dense open subset of GL ( n , C ) whose elements have pairwise distinct singular values. We develop a convenient description of the Poisson algebras of the U(n) × U(n) invariant functions, and show that one of the Hamiltonians of the reduced bi-Hamiltonian hierarchy yields a hyperbolic Sutherland model coupled to two u ( n ) * -valued spins. Thus we obtain a new bi-Hamiltonian interpretation of this model, which represents a special case of Sutherland models coupled to two spins obtained earlier from reductions of cotangent bundles of reductive Lie groups equipped with their canonical Poisson structure. Upon setting one of the spins to zero, we recover the bi-Hamiltonian structure of the standard hyperbolic spin Sutherland model that was derived recently by a different method.