Chili and the Tonic Fish (originally formed as Chili and the Whalekillers) were formed by Chili Tomasson, Clemens Csar and Àrni, Baldur and Hjörtur Hjörleifsson in 2009 in Salzburg. In 2011 David Bitschnau and Michael Szedenik joined the band, because of Clemens and Baldur moving to Australia and Iceland. Shortly after the successful release of their Debut-Album “The Tragic Tale of Julie and the Crying Clown” and contribution to the Biennale Salzburg with Marko Dinic in 2011, the band moved to Vienna. They continued playing various concerts all across Austria and Iceland.

Their second album “The Banker on the Run”, a concept album on the financial crisis, was released in April 2012, receiving extraordinary good critics and reviews. In 2013, Chili and the Whalekillers released their third album “Turn”. The second single and title-track “TURN” reached number three in the national Icelandic Charts.

Following that success,the band began to work on their fourth album “a dot in the sky”, won the European Youth Forum emerging Band Contest, which was accompanied by an invitation to play in Strasbourg (F), and began to tour more and more.

In April 2015 the band went on their first UK-Tour playing international Showcase-Festivals such as the Liverpool-Sound-City and the Great-Escape in Brighton. In October that year, they played another tour through Iceland and performed two shows at the Iceland Airwaves Festival.

In 2016 the band got signed by the German Label Velocity-Records and released their fifth Studio Album “Words on Tuesdays”. During this time Lisa Strohriegl joined the band to expand the instrumental range.

That year Chili Tomasson received the “Kompositions-Stipendium des Land Salzburg”.

​In 2017, Julia Julius and Jakob Weinhäupl joined the Band due to the departure of Àrni and Hjörtur Hjörleifsson.

The band developed a more and more upbeat-swing orientated style and continued playing various Tours mostly in Austria and Germany. ​

In April 2018 the band published the political, anti-right wing song “Viktor Orbán Builds a Wall” as a Single. Shortly after the release the song got restricted by YouTube and Facebook for about 10 days, arguing it would contain hatespeech. Smaller and independent Radio-Stations continued playing that song on special, political Radio-Formats.

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In 2018 Katharina Weinkamer and Jakob Willner joined the band, replacing Julia Julius and Lisa Strohriegl. Jakob’s Jazz-Experience and Katharina’s classical-music attitude widened the musical range and style once more.

In September 2018 the band published the Single “A Hole In The Wall” wich was accompanied by a music video from visual artist Isabel Seda.

In 2019 Chili and the Tonic Fish released their sixth studio album ARE YOU HAPPY and played Tours through Germany, Austria and Denmark. Due to the Outbreak of Covid-19 and the thereby cancellation of their following Tour, Chili and the Tonic Fish started working on a new set of songs. In Decemeber 2020 the Band decided, rather spontaneously, to release the music. A small storytelling based, Duet-Album: Weekend Lovers and other Complications.

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