It has been almost 15 years since The Temper Trap broke out with 'Sweet Disposition', the lead single from their debut album, 'Conditions'.
Despite two #1 albums – 2012's self-titled 'The Temper Trap' and 2016's 'Thick As Thieves' – and multiple singles that followed, 'Sweet Disposition' is still the track many think of when they consider the Melbourne band's back catalogue."I think we're just really lucky," the group's guitarist, keyboardist Joseph Greer says.
"We're lucky that somehow that song got stumbled upon and it's given us so much and really allowed us to keep doing this, and even being here playing these festivals and stuff – we haven't really been releasing music or anything, so I think we're really lucky to have it."
The band will appear at this year's Caloundra Music Festival, alongside Busby Marou, Kasey Chambers Spiderbait, Diesel and others – but it's Arrested Development that has Greer most excited.
"There's a lot of great bands, obviously, but I'm particularly excited to see them," he says. "I've got the nostalgia about them."
Greer says although they have played with some of the other artists on festivals before, it's the artists he doesn't know that he's most looking forward to seeing live.
"I think being in the music industry, for me anyway, I bury my head in the sand a little bit and don't keep across what's going on, just because I find it not competitive.
"It starts to get a bit overwhelming trying to really keep up with everything and figure out what you should be doing or what you shouldn't be doing, and I find it good if I just work on the music that I'm working on," he says.
"But festivals are a good place to actually see what's going on and maybe get some inspiration and hear new bands, or old bands that you haven't heard before and all sorts of things."
When The Temper Trap temporarily relocated to the UK for eight years, they played multiple UK and European festivals, including Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds.
"I remember when we first moved over the first year we got in a van and we did like 30 festivals in a month and a half or something like that," Joseph says.
"Looking back on that I feel pretty amazed; it was pretty quick as well going from being in Australia only hearing about these things growing up to suddenly playing these festivals you'd only ever dreamed about going to – then suddenly you're playing them."
Despite the band's meteoric rise and massive success both at home and overseas, all was not well within the band's ranks.
The burnout was real, Greer explains, after consistent writing and touring back to back since the release of the first record. "COVID kind of forced the band to have a break because most of us live in different countries now," he says. "Dougy [Mandagi] moved to Berlin, originally, now he lives in Bali.
"Then Johnny [Aherne], the bass player, he lives in America – in Portland. And then Toby [Dundas] and I live in Melbourne. So there's two of us here, which is good because we can get together all the time."
Before then, Greer says, the vibe within the band wasn't good. "It just didn't really feel like anyone was that excited anymore, and I think we'd just lost a bit of passion and that sort of thing," he says.
"I think what we needed to do was just be away from each other for three years."
Coming together again last year to support Kings Of Leon on their Australian tour, Joseph says they didn't know what to expect – but they gathered before the tour and did some writing, which felt good again.
"It felt like we were having fun again; there were no thoughts of anything else; it was just 'okay, let's just have fun'," Greer explains.
"Then the tour was the same, so that Kings Of Leon tour was really good, and we've played a couple of shows since then, but that was the last tour."
Fans who saw The Temper Trap perform at Caloundra Music Festival last time would have seen the band on the verge of burnout, but Greer promises a freshly reinvigorated performance this time – with new tracks, as well.
"We've got quite a few [new] songs on the go, but we're just trying to get to the point where we feel comfortable with releasing it. I think we're not really following any timeline or anything like that, we just want to make sure that we're feeling really excited about the songs and comfortable sharing them," he says.
"We'll try and play at least two or three I reckon. We'll see once we get together and see how the set's flowing; we'll figure out how many new songs we can put in."
The Temper Trap join the likes of Hiatus Kaiyote, Meg Mac, Sampa The Great, Vera Blue and many more at Caloundra Music Festival (Sunshine Coast) which takes place 29 September to 1 October.
The Temper Trap also play Out Of The Woods (Fremantle), which runs 7-8 October as well as part of Always Live at Pier Bandroom (Frankston) 29 November, and Changing Tides Festival at Kiama Showgrounds (Illawarra) 17 December.
