The mark of great music is that you keep coming back to it over and over again. It pulls you back with undeniable force, seeming to morph and shift with the tides of life.
Electro-rock band Caligula emerged onto the '90s Sydney scene as a force to be reckoned with, opening for the likes of Depeche Mode and Beastie Boys, before slowly going their own ways.However, years later the sirens call proved irresistible and the band beloved by the disenfranchised and the disaffected found its way back together.
Caligula are now celebrating the band's 30th anniversary, no small feat and a testament to the music's enduring power. "I'm grateful that we're still able to do it and people are interested in listening and watching us play," frontman Ash Rothschild shares.
"I've never stopped playing music from about 13 years old. Caligula is where it began to be real, we had a record deal and it took off in a weird way.
"It's always been a vehicle for expression, especially as a singer and lyric writer. Music's a channel for thoughts, frustration, love, hate and everything else."
The band could never lay down their instruments, as the various members formed their own creative outlets. One of Rothschild's other creative pursuits led to a chance meeting that brought the original band back together. "I've played with Mark, our guitarist, for 100 years, he was in a band called Scarlet," Ash says.
"We were playing in Panic Syndrome and doing a video clip at Sydney Props. They do the props for movies, giant lobsters and 20-foot-long cigars, it's insane.
"It so happens that the keyboard player from Caligula, Jamie, was running the place; and we were talking about the good old days and Mark said, 'Why don't you guys re-form?' And Mark and Panic Syndrome's drummer offered to join, and Jamie said 'let's do it'.
"So we put the band together purely for nostalgic reasons, and Jamie and I started writing together. We wrote three albums worth of songs, we really enjoyed it. We want to build something that brings people together."
Sitting in an exceptionally fruitful period of the band, Rothschild reflects on where it went wrong the first time with the power of hindsight. "We hit this wall because we weren't a particularly prolific band.
"Because of the music technology at the time, making music took a lot longer. We were sampling things, so it took a long time to put songs together. We were kind of sitting on the same songs for a long time and you burnout when you're not getting your creative juices going. In hindsight, we just needed a break."
Caligula's freshest offering 'Save Me' (to be released 11 July; pre-order it) is raw storytelling at its honest best, backed by the band's lush synths and a hypnotic, goth groove. The earworm melody lingers after the first taste.
'Save Me' will feature in Caligula's Tricenary celebration, which promises surprise performances alongside C54 – a revisitation of classics from Insurge, Soulscraper and Discordia, as well as multiple DJs spinning goth and industrial essentials.
"Jamie is the foremost music writer; I write the vocals and lyrics," Rothschild says. "He collects analog synths, but he also embraces modern technology. I write on an acoustic guitar, and he's the technology guy.
"Jamie will send me a piece of music, and if it's uplifting, it pulls something uplifting out of me. If it's dark, I will channel something. Morrissey can put really dark lyrics into a happy song, and 'Save Me' had a bit of that, a bit of both sides.
"It's about feeling that your relationship is starting to fizzle out, and you can't save it and you can't save yourself. It's unsalvageable. I'm a very emotional person, I go from zero to 100 in seconds, and I'm grateful that I can channel that into music.
"With 'Save Me', I noticed that the greatest songs start with a chorus, so I asked Jamie to edit the song, and he was like, 'Oh my God, it works!' It's cool."
Rothschild muses on his writing process and finding comfort and catharsis in creativity. "I usually write in a stream of consciousness style. When my mum passed away years ago, I knew I needed to use my channel to get out of my brain, because I didn't want to hold it all in.
"So I wrote a postcard that started with, 'Mother, I miss you'. It wasn't a conversation, it was a letter. I wrote another about how she's not gonna see my kids grow up.
"It's really cathartic and therapeutic singing them, because, whilst I'm not a man of faith, I feel like I was singing them out to the universe to where she is."
Caligula play The Lansdowne Hotel (Sydney) on 2 August. The band's new single is titled 'Save Me' and will be released 11 July.
