"It caught us off guard; it really did," lead singer and guitarist Josh Teskey said.
"That side of the career was a fairytale sort of moment … we were a little bit like, 'wow OK, we might actually have something here'."
Brothers Josh and Sam, who formed the band in 2008 with longtime friends Brendon Love and Liam Gough, weren't an overnight success.
They had spent "10 years or more" gigging around Victoria before releasing their debut album, Half Mile Harvest, in January 2017.
The album soon took the band members beyond their home state, with their first performances outside Victoria later that year.
"It was a really pleasant, beautiful surprise when we got some success on this record," Josh said.
It peaked at number 18 on the ARIA album chart and reached number 49 on the Netherlands Dutch Album Top 100.
Josh and Sam have been by each other's side for the entire ride, having first started gigging together when Josh was 16 and Sam was 14.
Even in the early days, they had their own "systems in place" to ensure a smooth show.
"Sam studied sound engineering when he left high school … so when we played a gig, he'd always set up the PA and do a lot of the tech work," Josh said.
"I always would find myself being the people person, so I'd go talk to the people whose venue we were playing at."
While they've been touring and playing together for years, Josh said not much had changed.
"I feel really blessed that I get to work with him every day," he said.
"It's a really cool thing for siblings and family to be able to see each other and always get to work together. It's really, really awesome."
Now the brothers are gearing up to mark 10 years since the release of their breakthrough album, performing it in full on the opening weekend of the Melbourne International Jazz Festival.
Josh said it had been "really fun revisiting all these songs" and he had been pleasantly surprised at how easy it had been to get them "road-ready".
While the band has continued to play some tracks from the album over the years, others are coming out of retirement.
"We're revisiting them and going, 'we have so much fun playing this song. We should actually bring this back into the set more regularly'," Josh said.
"And then other songs that we actually never ever got around to playing live before … realising the potential of those songs has been really fun."
The Teskey Brothers will headline the Melbourne International Jazz Festival at Sidney Myer Music Bowl on Saturday.
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