Taxiride

After their music was heard by an executive from record label Warner, the band signed a contract and released their debut album, Imaginate, in 1999.

[10] The band ultimately named themselves Taxiride because they had given some of their early work to a friend of theirs, a taxi driver, who had tested these songs on passengers.

[11] In 1998, Taxiride relocated to Ocean Way Recording studios in Los Angeles to work with producer Jack Joseph Puig on its debut album.

[19] Taxiride wrote the majority of the album in a studio, and the final product generally used songs that band members had worked on individually.

Steve Kurutz of Allmusic gave it three stars, calling the album a "slick...bid for pop radio".

Despite the album's success, Hall left the band to work independently and with his other pet project, Airway Lanes.

[24][25][26] Taxiride began work on their second album, Garage Mahal which was released on 5 August 2002, producing three singles: "Creepin' Up Slowly", "How I Got This Way", and "Afterglow".

[29] Most of the writing was done in two places; Mount Macedon in Victoria, and Palindrome Studio in Venice Beach, California, the home of producer Fred Maher.

[30] Despite the change in sound, the band were still seen as purely a pop band—Australian Musician magazine claimed this was because they spent too much time overseas.

[22] Gary Glauber of PopMatters praised the album, noting it had not lost the quality of its predecessor, although it was a good deal heavier.

They decided to release independently after splitting up with Warner Music,[34] and recorded at Wild's Melbourne home for a total of 12 months.

[38] In July 2017, Dan Hall elected to take a break from the group to focus on other musical projects, including South Side Rebel and Interlocker.

[40] On Garage Mahal, Taxiride had three active singer-songwriters, with their strong opinions on musical content clashing frequently.

Singh told Dan Grunebaum of Metropolis Tokyo that the arguments came about "because we were very passionate about what goes down onto tape", and so they were resolved by recognising the overall goal of the band's work.