Hilltop Hoods Singer Matt Lambert has revealed that the pandemic pause went on for so long that he actually forgot the lyrics to his own song.

Matt Lambert, who is joined by Dan Smith and Barry Francis in the group, hadn’t performed together for over two years when they gathered together for a recent rehearsal.

“I will say that our first rehearsal back was a bit of a train wreck,” Lambert told The Daily Telegraph. “I was literally on Rap Genius looking up my lyrics during the rehearsal.”

He added, “It had been two years and we hadn’t had one show or one rehearsal and we don’t listen to our own music so it wasn’t surprising that the first one was a bit dicey.”

Smith agreed with Lambert, saying: “There was a moment that I thought maybe we’d lost the touch.”

However, the men worked together to relearn what they’d forgotten and returned to the stage for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic at Groovin’ the Moo late last month.

“It was weird coming into it because I was a little bit nervous,” Smith said of their return to the stage. “Doing the show itself, it felt like we’d never left off playing. The crowd was amazing.”

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During the Groovin’ the Moo performance Hilltop Hoods played their popular song The Nosebleed Section. Though it was initially released in 2003, the track has recently racked up millions of streams thanks to a TikTok trend where it’s being used as background music in videos.

“We have no perspective on it really but for good or bad, most people know that song, so it’s hard to tell if the reaction was because of TikTok. But that song definitely did get a big, old bump from TikTok,” Lambert says of the recent refresh of popularity for the song.

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