Vanilla Ninja is an Estonian all-female rock band which enjoyed chart success in a number of countries across Europe, especially in Estonia, Germany and Austria.

After their debut single "Club Kung Fu" was released in 2003, the band had many hits in Central Europe, including "Tough Enough", "When the Indians Cry", "Blue Tattoo" and "I Know".

The band was originally a four-piece group consisting of Maarja Kivi, Lenna Kuurmaa, Katrin Siska and Piret Järvis.

In December 2005 she also left the group to start a solo career and finish school, and the band decided to continue as a three-piece act.

[9] Due to her participation in Eurolaul she was chosen to front the band, which subsequently gained some exposure early on in their existence, despite none of the other members having had any previous national success in their career.

The jury, which included figures such as Michael Ball, proved to not share the opinion expressed by the televoters and placed the girls joint bottom of the ten entrants.

Following a successful debut in Estonia, Vanilla Ninja have launched themselves as a band in three German speaking countries of Europe – Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

It proved to be a success, gaining large amounts of airplay on the popular VIVA music video channel, and making the top twenty in both Germany and Austria.

Their chart performance had also been improving, with the Traces Of Sadness album making #14, but despite that no-one would have expected the shock announcement that the group would represent Switzerland in the 2005 Eurovision Song Contest.

The Swiss selectors had suffered several years of poor results in the Eurovision, culminating in 'null points' for Piero and the MusicStars in the 2004 semi-final, and so looked to the group due to their popularity in both Switzerland and various other European countries.

Their selection and participation in the contest was put into jeopardy soon after the announcement, though, after Maarja Kivi left the group due to becoming pregnant with her first child.

Kivilaan had in fact initially claimed to be 17 years old, but the Swiss selectors doubted this and eventually found out her true birth date was 13 January 1989.

It began to look as if Vanilla Ninja would not represent Switzerland in 2005, but the Swiss selectors decided not to reverse the selection, on the basis that Kivilaan would turn 16 before the contest.

With the song putting them into the German chart mainstream, and gaining huge airplay on the music video channel VIVA, Vanilla Ninja would begin to become one of the biggest acts in Germany.

Following the success of the "Blue Tattoo" single in November and December 2004, the group would take a three-month break from releasing material in order to tour Asia.

In 2004 the group had reportedly set an ambitious target of "conquering the world",[10] and the tour proved to be successful in helping them to begin to do that, winning new fans in countries such as Japan, China, Malaysia and Thailand.

The group also played a key role in VIVA's 2004 "Your Stars For Christmas" show, singing a re-worded version of "When The Indians Cry" called "Light Of Hope".

In May 2005 the group returned to the charts, releasing a new song called "I Know", which featured a mildly controversial video based around domestic abuse.

Among the songs he had allegedly bought many copies of were the groups "When The Indians Cry" single, and the German Eurovision entry "Run and Hide" by Gracia.

The girls came out unaffected, although it would be a blow for the songwriter and may have meant the high position of "When The Indians Cry" was helped by the mass-buying of singles by Brandes.

Against artists such as Wig Wam, Luminita Anghel and Zdob şi Zdub the competition was difficult, but the group progressed to the final and were given good odds of 10/1 for winning the contest.

The band's not knowing about the releases was further backed up by 2004 promotional photos being used for the CD covers, with Maarja Kivi appearing, despite leaving the group over a year beforehand.

The group released their first original single for almost a year in April 2006, with "Dangerzone" seeing the girls retain their pop-rock sound from previous albums.

The Austrian release would also make #23, suggesting that the group is likely to continue the success that Traces of Sadness and Blue Tattoo had in Central Europe.

The three members are also seen as something of sex symbols in their homeland, with a 2006 poll by the Estonian magazine Kroonika voting Piret Järvis the country's most attractive female.

Broken Records International S.A. founder, Héctor Faune, tried to contact Vanilla Ninja with no success, until two Polish fans (Tomek & Yo – Tomek), from the site love-ninjas gave to Faune Lenna's direct contact, so he could propose to the band the idea to participate in the Viña del Mar International Song Festival 2008, representing their native Estonia.