Both.

No.

Sometimes. Generally not. We spend most of the time in fits of laughter. We enjoy each others' company and that is reflected in our live performances, because we enjoy being on stage together and jamming.

Not really. We're fairly shy

It depends what else is on...but Harry is the loudest trumpet player in the universe

Yes.

A month before that at Commercial Club Hotel on Nicholson St in Fitzroy

Yes. Our second gig was at Plan B (downstairs from the Great Britain in Richmond) on 25th June 2001 (I think) and for the first few hours they served free Piss on tap. Piss is the brand of beer served at the pub. It's the quickest the room has ever filled up after doors opening, at any Cat Empire gig.

This must be the most FAQ of FAQs, and the answer is... ?
There is no genre really, we like to bring styles out of genres and just play whatever we feel like playing. If you had to call it something you could just call it "good music". We play music from all over the world and we make it our own because we play it the way we feel it and we play it with our own distinctly Melburnian attitude.

Check out the tour diary. There's hundreds of thousands of words about tour buses and showerheads and free beer.

Some of our best gigs are the small ones. The really small ones. That's not to say that the really big gigs are necessarily worse, but when there's about 100 people watching, that's when the really interesting stuff comes out. It kind of reminds us of where our gigs started, and there's more freedom to get into a play-whatever-the-hell-you-want frame of mind. And because the band is improving with age, then the last small gig we did has been the best so far. That was at the Moulin Rouge in Sydney, March 2004. We like it so much that parts of it turned up on the B-sides to the Chariot single.

It was fun, we had a great room and a receptive crowd every night, and it was nice to know one of the most influential figures of music in the 20th Century was ready to take the stage straight after us. We were pretty lucky to see his show four times.

Some of our best gigs are the small ones. The really small ones. That's not to say that the really big gigs are necessarily worse, but when there's about 100 people watching, that's when the really interesting stuff comes out. It kind of reminds us of where our gigs started, and there's more freedom to get into a play-whatever-the-hell-you-want frame of mind. And because the band is improving with age, then the last small gig we did has been the best so far. That was at the Moulin Rouge in Sydney, March 2004. We like it so much that parts of it turned up on the B-sides to the Chariot single.

We met this guy Jayson at Adelaide Festival in early 2002, and he said he wanted to fly us to California for one gig. We laughed, but a few months later we were getting on the plane.

The band is named after a picture of the same name, drawn by Max Riebl (Felix's younger brother). It's a picture of a group of cats disguised as thieves and gangsters.

It's hard to know where the music will head in five years, but we'll still be doing what we love for all the right reasons. Having lots of fun making the crowd have lots of fun and all the while sneaking jazz into the kids' bedrooms.

With six members in the band, all with diverse - and increasingly diversifying - listening tastes, there's alot of ingredients being thrown haphazardly into the stew that is the music of The Cat Empire. Before i go too far with the culinary analogy, it's worth saying we're never afraid to include bits of what we've all been listening to: no flavour or ingredient is out-of-bounds. Some of the strongest influences come from closer to home though, with Melbourne's music scene and all the players in it being one of the biggest influences on all of us.

We've been way lucky - or selective - with support gigs thus far, getting to work with some of our favorite and most influential bands. Manu Chao would have to be next on the list. In Brazil.