Possibly stupid question for live stuff

Sorry about the intense stupidity of the following, please be kind.

Here's the dillio. For a live environment, I'm trying to figure out the best/easiest way to get sound from my laptop to a mixing desk, and I'm thinking that DI would be easiest and/or give me better flexibility at venues since I just have to get them to run 4 XLR cables to the DI's (Yes I need 4 channels) and I KNOW I'm good to go. Thing is, my Audio Interface outputs are 1/4" balanced jacks so I don't really need to use the DI to convert unbalanced -> balanced. Given that I'll be on stage with the mixing desk at the other end of the room, there's no way I'm getting a 50ft+ loom to run straight to the desk from my AI outputs. I figured I'd still go down the DI route since it offers decent grounding which I've heard can be a problem?

I could just get some Jack > XLR cables to run straight into the patchbay on stage, but whatever length of cable I buy, it's always too short and given that would require me spending circa £80 on cables, I thought I'd rather invest that in some DI stuff would provide me with better flexibility at venues as mentioned above.

So the question would be, what type of DI box should I be looking at? Because I'm already running a line signal into it, it's been suggested I should get a passive rather than active box. Is that correct? Ideally I'd look for a 4 channel box, but I could just get 2 stereo DI's if it's cheaper. Is there a particular brand and/or model that anyone might recommend?

Thanks.

Sorry again for any stupidity contained within.