Holy Holy has come a long way since its first gig at a tiny upstairs venue in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley in 2012.
Singer Tim Carroll and guitarist Oscar Dawson have since performed in Barcelona, the Sydney Opera House and in front of thousands at Splendour in the Grass.
“We brought along our own smoke machine that Oscar was operating with his foot in between songs,” Carroll said describing the debut gig.
“It was a bit tragic in retrospect… funny, and tragic.”
Carroll and Dawson met 10 years before forming the band, despite living on different ends of Australia’s east coast.
The budding musicians, one from Brisbane and the other from Melbourne, signed up as volunteers to teach English in Thailand after finishing school.
“We wanted to see the world but not just do a Contiki tour and drink piss all the time,” Carroll said.
In their downtime the two rode borrowed mopeds through village rice paddies and discovered their respective musical talents.
“We would sit around in these wooden cabins and play guitar and drink Thai rum,” Carroll said,
“It was a really exciting time in our lives.”
The two kept in touch, with Carroll completing a degree in social work and Dawson joining Melbourne band the Dukes of Windsor.
A decade later Carroll fell in love with a Swedish girl and moved to Stockholm.
The Dukes were based in Germany and one night Dawson needed a couch to crash in Stockholm.
Sure, Carroll said, so long as Dawson helped mix and produce a song he had been working on.
“I was kind of ready to move away from the folk singer-songwriter,” Carroll said.
The music would form the basis for their debut EP and first album When The Storms Would Come.
“When we got back to Australia we decided to get into a proper studio and record,” Carroll said.
The band now has five members and gets regular airtime on Triple J.
“It never gets old hearing your songs on the radio,” Carroll said.
The band is touring with its new single Darwinism which Carroll described as an “evolution” from a simple guitar rift and into “a big symphonic mess”.
Holy Holy will be in Geelong on Saturday night at the Workers Club with support acts I Know Leopard and Alex L’Estrange.
