Country Music Television named their follow-up, Weather and Water, as one of the ten best bluegrass albums of 2005, and The Greencards were invited to tour with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson in the same year.

Viridian would go on to take the number one position on Billboard magazine's Bluegrass Music Chart, making the Greencards the first international band to do so.

The Greencards' sound has been compared to progressive American folk rock, and they have been credited with helping to expand bluegrass music.

The Greencards were initially composed of two Australians, Kym Warner on mandolin and Carol Young on bass, and an Englishman, Eamon McLoughlin on fiddle.

[2][4][5] Trained in London studying Royal Schools of Music Grades before emigrating, McLoughlin also toured with the Asylum Street Spankers, Austin Lounge Lizards, Bruce Robison and Ray Wylie Hubbard after arriving in the United States.

[9] The winner of the Australian National Bluegrass Mandolin Championship for four consecutive years, Warner had toured with country music artists including Gina Jeffreys, and with Young in Kasey Chambers's band.

[11][12] Warner was producing an album for the recording artist Bill Atkins and found they needed a fiddle player, which led to the recruitment of McLoughlin.

[12] Representative of an emerging "newgrass" movement, the Greencards' acoustic sound was said to incorporate eclectic influences from Irish traditional, Romani gypsy, and Latin American musical sources.

Warner credited the frantic pace of their performance schedule during their Austin formation to their cohesion as a group and with driving them to create more new original music.

[14] Warner said that during their early career performing together, audiences would always assume they were American musicians until they finally spoke between songs, revealing their English and Australian accents.

[17] Mario Tarradell of WFAA-TV news called the idea of an American bluegrass band composed of two Australians and an Englishman not as "outrageous" as it may seem.

[1]In 2003, The Greencards recorded and self-released Movin' On, their debut album, which sold 10,000 copies at shows and online, and entered the top five on the Americana radio charts.

[13] Pat Flynn, one of the band members of the New Grass Revival, guested on the recording of Movin' On as a session guitarist, and would return to do so again on Weather and Water.

[17] The album was said to break past traditional rules of bluegrass music by integrating a jam-band mindset while blending classical folk balladry and rock 'n' roll into the sound.

[21] The band was credited with performing the most energetic sets during the course of the 2004 Austin City Limits Music Festival, were said to bring a global sound to bluegrass, and—by drawing on influences such as Bob Dylan and The Beatles—were pushing the genre's boundaries.

[17] In a review of Weather and Water in The Washington Post, it was noted that on this album, unlike their debut, the focus was on the music supporting lyrics, rather than the blues virtuosity of Movin' On.

[13] Their music through the Weather and Water album had been called Celtic-influenced and bluegrass-flavored by John Lehndorff of the Rocky Mountain News, but he noted that the band had a distinctly American sound despite their overseas origins.

[3] Jason Gonulsen of Glide Magazine noted that The Greencards' debut Movin' On did not capture the band's live energy, but that Weather and Water overcame this, and was one of 2005's best bluegrass albums.

[30] Kym Warner credits Gary Paczosa, an engineer who worked on Weather and Water, with helping them get the opportunity to tour with Dylan and Nelson.

[28] In December 2006, their tour van rolled over on a patch of ice after leaving a performance in Bryan, Texas on the way back to Austin, but with no serious injuries.

[7] Most of the songs on Viridian are sung by Young, and all of the tracks were written by The Greencards, with the exception of "Travel On", which was penned by Kim Richey of Nashville.

[12] In a review of Viridian, Embo Blake of Hybrid Magazine noted Carol Young's vocal skill, as she "effortlessly diphthongs cadence" on the track "Waiting On The Night".

While we still have the bluegrass and roots music influences, we really wanted to push ourselves harder on this one, something a bit more challenging to play live."

[41] Jim Abbott of the Tribune News Service described The Greencards as polished, "earthy, charming roots music with a sophisticated sheen", but noted that some bluegrass purists may miss the vocal idiosyncrasies that can be found on other acts such as the Del McCoury Band.

[1] The Greencards' work on Movin' On had a looser, jam-based feeling to it, which they later firmed into a more polished sound after relocating to Nashville from Austin for Weather and Water.

[33] John T. Davis in No Depression Magazine stated The Greencards' best work on Weather and Water contained a "stillness", which he felt contrasted with the speed and "frantic" pace of some of the songs on Movin' On.

[44] According to David McPherson in Bluegrass Unlimited magazine, the band's three-part harmonies evoke the soul sounds of gospel music.

[21][43] The recordings on Viridian, in particular the songs "River of Sand", "Waiting on the Night" and "When I Was in Love With You", were said to evoke the sounds of progressive folk rock that emerged in the 1960s.

[46] In Nashville Scene, Edd Hurt noted the eclectic tone of the band's overall body of recordings, and believed that their albums belonged to the tradition of singer-songwriter musicians.

[4] Naila Francis described The Greencards's sound as having a mellow tone, with "tender ballards and yarns" in their songs, but punctuated by bursts of energetic musical restlessness.