That Petrol Emotion were also far more political and outspoken than the Undertones had been, by examining issues relating to the Troubles in their songwriting,[9][10] and the Irish members listing their names in their preferred non-Anglicized forms on sleeve art.
After signing a new deal with Demon Records,[7] their debut album, Manic Pop Thrill, was released in 1986 and reached the number 1 spot on the UK indie chart.
Demonstrating an intensification of the band's political stance, the back sleeve of "Big Decision" had contained text criticising the Diplock courts in Northern Ireland and their potential ability to convict on false or forced confessions.
"[6] By this stage, That Petrol Emotion had won the praise of significant alternative rock figures such as Robert Smith of the Cure and Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins.
Following demands made to the band to deliver immediate hit singles, That Petrol Emotion exploited a loophole in their contract and left Polydor, only to be snapped up within a few weeks by Virgin Records.
Its diversity of styles was meant to emulate the eclectic mixtapes the band loved and listened to on their tour bus, but their continued experiments with dance music ("Groove Check", "Here It Is... Take It!
", "Tension") mixed with heavy alternative rock ("Goggle Box", "Under the Sky"), Celtic ballads ("Cellophane"), and indie ("Sooner or Later", "Every Little Bit") was considered at the time to be too disjointed and far-ranging to break into the mainstream.
[9] More recently, however, the album has been reappraised, with many critics and fans realizing that the band were ahead of their time, and, due to their penchant for mixing indie rock with elements of dance music and funk, were trailblazers for the Madchester indie-dance scene.
[7] This new dynamic led to the 1990 album Chemicrazy, which was produced by Scott Litt[9] and showcased a more straightforward rock style than before, while also maintaining a pure pop heart, exemplified by its singles "Sensitize", "Hey Venus", and "Tingle".
Like their debut album, Fireproof reached number 1 on the UK Indie Chart, but despite generally-positive press coverage, and the loyal fan base they had garnered over ten years, TPE was failing to attain the level of sustained commercial success or popularity enjoyed by contemporaries such as My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth.
[24] John O'Neill had already formed the intermittently-active Northern Irish trip hop band Rare in 1990, scoring a hit single in 1996 with "Something Wild", and releasing a lone album, Peoplefreak, in 1998.
In November 1999, the O'Neill brothers reunited in a new version of the Undertones (original frontman Feargal Sharkey declined to participate) which continues to perform and release records to this day.
[33] In 2022, the Demon sublabel Edsel issued a box set entitled "Every Beginning Has a Future: An Anthology 1984–1994", which includes of all the band's albums, with the majority of their b-sides and remixes added as bonus tracks.
It is widely agreed that, while never achieving chart success or high sales figures, the band left a lasting influence on the Madchester and Britpop movements, specifically on such artists as The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Manic Street Preachers, Andrew Bird, Spoon, Blur and Radiohead.