Aria Awards 2024: Oli and Louis Leimbach share how they got started in music and where the name Lime Cordiale came from
Most siblings spend their days growing up fighting over who gets to pick the channel to watch on the TV, but that wasn’t the case for brothers Oli and Louis Leimbach.
Instead, the two halves of Aussie indie rock group, Lime Cordiale, spent their days growing up playing “nerdy band instruments”.
“Our mum kind of pushed us into music without us really knowing we were getting pushed into music,” Oli told 9honey Celebrity on the 2024 ARIA Awards red carpet.
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“She was just like ‘choose your instrument because you don’t have a choice, you’re playing music’.”
The duo explained it was never a question as to whether or not they would be musicians, but more so as to what capacity they would do it in.
“I was on clarinet, Louis trumpet,” Oli laughs, recalling their beginnings.
“Then we started playing guitars and piano and bass, just so we could write songs, really, because it’s not very nice singing and playing clarinet at the same time.”
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The brothers, who grew up in Sydney’s Northern Beaches, are today one of the biggest names on the Aussie music scene.
They just released their first ever coffee table book titled Hard To Define, which reflects on their past 15 years as a band.
“I reckon it’s a thing that you look back even in another five years or 10 years, and you’ll get even more emotional,” Louis explains of the process of compiling all their keepsakes.
And while the boys themselves haven’t held on to too much memorabilia over the years, they say that they have their parents to thank for majority of the material in the book.
“I raided my parents house, they’re hoarders – super hoarders – you know, every time you go to their house it’s our first gigs everywhere,” Louis says.
“And props,” Oli adds. “They just collect everything.
“It’s something, like, we might have a tour poster and think ‘Oh we don’t need that, give it to a fan or throw it out or something’. But they collect everything, you know, being very passionate, supportive parents.”
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Oli explains that the book includes “a whole bunch of stuff that has never seen the light of day,” adding that putting it together really allowed him and his brother to see just how far they’ve come in their careers.
“That’s kind of why we put it out because on Instagram you might take a whole bunch of photos across the tour and only 10 make it on Instagram or something like that,” he says.
“But we’ve got all these stories and memories, and we’ve taken photos of props and you know, whatever was in Louis undies drawer. So you get a whole bunch of special little treats.”
And even though the band has a loyal following, many fans often find themselves asking where their seemingly random name came from.
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”We were already calling ourselves The Limes, and we were at a music festival in France called Music Cordiale,” Oli begins to explain.
“And we were just thinking, ‘Wouldn’t that be funny? If we called ourselves Lime Cordiale? Wouldn’t that be just the best band name ever?’ And we’ve regretted it ever since,” he laughs.
“Deep regrets” adds Louis.
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