Most audio interfaces add about 10db gain when you flip it to Instrument mode. Most of my guitars are pretty hot, and at least one of them can make that type of input clip pretty easily. I find it doesn't make much difference if you're just going to slam it into a dirty amp sim anyway. Usually the analog electronics will start to distort before you hit 0 anyway, so it's a lot like a not-quite-clean boost before the amp.
What I do is plug my guitar into a buffered bypass pedal and then straight into the line input. Don't tell it it's an instrument.