Sam Margin was always the self-confessed ringleader of The Rubens whenever the band required a celebration.
And given the success the indie five-piece from Menangle has enjoyed over the past 15 years, highlighted by a triple J Hottest 100 victory with Hoops in 2016 and an ARIA No.1 album, there's been plenty to celebrate.
The reality of life in the music industry means there's always a beer available.
But it came with a price for Sam. About 18 months ago he made the decision to rein in his drinking.
"I knew that something had to give at some point," Sam Margin tells Weekender.
"To be honest, I didn't really think that we'd have such a nice long career and that maybe the band would end before I'd have to address my booze problem.
"But considering that we're still going strong, I think it was like, 'All right, well, either the band's going to have to stop or I'm going to have to learn to sort of control my booze' because it was also f--king with my anxiety as well, which is not ideal.
"Some nights I would be super hungover from the day before, which increases my anxiety, and I'm about to go in front of a few thousand people, and in my mind I'm like, 'What are you doing to yourself? Why do you keep doing this? This is insane.'
"You don't want to even have a conversation with one individual you've never met before at this point, let alone go out and play a show.
"It was for me like a personal thing. Everyone else, they're good with it, but for me it was like I needed to sort it out, and it's been really good."
Sam's bandmate and brother Elliott Margin says it was confronting at first for the rest of the Rubens, but the boys quickly rallied around their singer.
"You grow up kind of naively just thinking that we're all having fun and we're all invincible, especially being in a band," Elliott says.
Some nights I would be super hungover from the day before, which increases my anxiety, and I'm about to go in front of a few thousand people, and in my mind I'm like, 'What are you doing to yourself?'
"Alcohol's just around, and it's just a part of the fun. You kind of feel like you hear about maybe other people having issues, but not us boys; we're fine.
"Then to see Sam going through that, all of a sudden, it's like, 'Okay, we need to hold ourselves accountable and look out for each other.' It was a good eye-opener for all of us."
The band's bout of soul-searching helped inspire the title of their forthcoming sixth album, Group Therapy, out on October 16.
After exploring R&B, soul, pop and synth influences and production on their past three albums, Lo La Ru (2018), 0202 (2021) and Soda (2024), The Rubens simplified the process on Group Therapy.
The band zeroed in on the essence of Sam's and Elliott's songs.
"I guess our progression through our career has been experimenting with a bunch of different ways of making music - different instruments, different keyboards, synthesisers, etc.," Sam says.
"It's really fun to do that stuff, and we've tried for ages, but then we realised that the best kind of songs don't need any of that stuff.
"So where you can pare them back and have them back to their bare essentials, and then maybe just build it a little bit back up from there, that's the sweet spot.
"There's nothing to hide behind when you're just trying to keep it quite simple."
One of the highlights is the opener and latest single, Love Me America. The track explores The Rubens' early taste of the US when a major label was courting them on the strength of their breakthrough 2012 single, My Gun.
Sam sings, "Stole my attention LA to Boston/ Promised me everything/ Kings played for us and we put all our trust in/ Resolving doors and dreams."
One of the reasons the major label interest went cold was because of a mass school shooting that rocked the US at the time. The Rubens have subsequently toured the US constantly and built a substantial fanbase.
Sam says the song is a love letter to the US, rather than an angry retort.
"If a song with 'My Gun' as the title didn't get picked up in the States, I might be bitter because America has an interesting relationship with guns, and I feel like that wouldn't have been fair if our career ended at that moment," he says.
"But we were lucky enough to have grown as a band since then, so one of our biggest moments was yet to come with Hoops and a bunch of crazy touring and stuff, so that kind of was the antidote to maybe looking back bitterly at like this one thing, 'Oh, we missed our shot'.
"We didn't miss our shot. That was one little speed bump in like a career that's lasted another 15 years, which is awesome."
The Rubens last toured the US last year, and Elliott says it remains a market they're passionate about.
"Jumping on a bus thing and driving around the country, and it is still so much fun," he says.
"There is the dream as a band to break it in America, and that's kind of the north star for most bands.
"We've done so much there that it's almost like we just want to go back and keep on playing for new people again and get people to hear our music. It's not necessarily about the big record deal or something, because we've seen that side of it."
