Those early singles built significant buzz, but the duo weren’t ready to commit to a career.

“We just wanted to record music. We didn’t want to be a touring band,” says Maddell, who credits their manager, Andrew Klippel, with pushing them to think bigger.

“We needed a bit of persuading,” agrees Pavlovic. “I think if we had it our way, we probably wouldn’t be where we are.”

Even today, Maddell does his best to keep his identity hidden, permanently hiding his face behind his tousled, neon pink fringe and using an assumed name (he was born Leroy Bressington).

“I still feel a bit nervous,” he says, despite selling more than 100,000 concert tickets last year – 60,000 of them in the US alone.

Many of those fans got their first taste of Royel Otis through two viral radio sessions.

The first, recorded in January 2024, put a nostalgic indie spin on Sophie Ellis Bextor’s Murder On The Dancefloor, external.

Four months later, a cover of The Cranberries’ Linger for Sirius XM entered the US Top 100 and became the band’s biggest song on Spotify, with 223 million plays.

The song choice “was a spur of the moment thing”, says Maddell.

“I remember our drummer at the time was like, ‘You can’t do that. There are just certain songs you don’t touch’.”

Adopting the time-honoured tradition of ignoring anything your drummer says, they pushed ahead.

Even so, says Pavlovic, “it took us three attempts to get it right”.

“We were terrified,” says Maddell. “We thought it was going to be horrible.”

Instead, Linger has become a permanent fixture of their live shows. Last month, they even got to perform it with Cranberries guitarist Noel Hogan in London.

“He was such a gentleman,” says Maddell. “He wanted to do our version of the song more than he wanted to do his own.”

How does it feel to have the covers eclipse their own material?

“They’re kind of like our biggest songs, which is bittersweet,” says Maddell. “But we’re just appreciative that so many people who would never have heard our band discovered us with those covers.

“So it’s a double-edged sword, but it’s a sexy sword.”