Five hundred. That is how many copies of Bloom existed when The Paper Kites first put it out into the world. Hand-designed brown cardboard sleeves. Burned on CDs. Sold at small shows in Melbourne. Five hundred copies of a song that now has two billion views on TikTok. That gap, between five hundred and two billion, is the entire story of this band. And India understood it before almost anyone else did.

That is not an accident. That is the specific kind of music that travels without being pushed. It finds the right person at the right moment and then that person sends it to someone else and that person sends it to someone else and suddenly it is everywhere without ever having announced itself. India found The Paper Kites exactly that way. And when the band finally came here in March 2025, the rooms already knew every word.

The Paper Kites are five people. Sam Bentley on vocals, guitar and harmonica. Christina Lacy on vocals, piano and guitar. David Powys on guitar and banjo. Samuel Rasmussen on bass and synth. And Josh Bentley, Sam’s cousin, on drums. They formed in Melbourne in 2010, expanding from the original Sam and Christina duo after being accepted into a local music festival. Their sound from the beginning was something very specific. Acoustic guitars. Banjo. Ethereal harmonies between Sam and Christina. Songs that felt like they were written for the exact moment you needed them most, not the moment you were ready for them. Their music has always had this quality of arriving a few seconds before you realise you need it.
Bloom was the song that changed everything but it changed it slowly. Sam has described it as “a pretty steady progression of word of mouth, friends telling their friends and so on. It wasn’t any sort of viral thing, it was a really natural build up of people sharing our music.” That slow natural spread is precisely why it landed so deeply. Songs that go viral by force feel disposable. Songs that spread through genuine human recommendation feel like secrets. Bloom felt like a secret. And Indian fans kept it that way for years before TikTok made it the most covered song on the platform.
Seven studio albums later, The Paper Kites have soundtracked some of the most important moments in people’s lives. Their songs have appeared in Grey’s Anatomy, This Is Us and Virgin River. Their 2015 album twelvefour, an entire record built around the feeling of being awake at 3am when the world is quiet and your thoughts are not, is the one that Indian fans return to most. There is something about that album specifically that hits different at a certain time of night in a certain state of mind. Anyone who has ever put on twelve four at 3am and stared at the ceiling knows exactly what I mean. You don’t have to explain it. The album already did.

Their debut India shows were announced in two cities. Bengaluru on March 20 and Mumbai on March 21, 2025, as part of the LiveBox gig series by Skillbox. But the moment the announcement went up, something happened that the band genuinely did not expect. Delhi fans started making noise immediately. Through social media, through management channels, through every available means of communication. The feedback was so overwhelming that the band added a third show. Delhi NCR on March 18, two days before Bengaluru. Samuel Rasmussen put it simply. “There were a lot of people in Delhi that felt like they were missing out, so we just decided to put on a Delhi show. We did have a few spare days there, so it worked out well.”
That detail matters. An international band on their first India visit, adding a city not because it was logistically convenient but because the fans asked for it and they listened. That is exactly who The Paper Kites are. They have always been a band that pays attention to the people on the other side of the music.

The tour artwork made for India was something special on its own. A bold blue Indian peacock, the national bird, with its feathers woven through with architectural elements inspired by Indian heritage, delicate arches, ornate jali patterns, motifs from ancient palaces and temples. The entire visual identity of the India tour was designed to honour the country they were visiting for the first time. The band loved it. The fans loved it. The artwork was used across all three cities and became a collector’s piece in its own right.
Delhi went first. Then Bengaluru. Then Mumbai. Three nights, three cities, one band finally showing up for the country that had been quietly carrying their music for fifteen years. Rasmussen reflected on it afterward with the kind of honesty that the band’s music is made of. “There’s enthusiastic people everywhere. So we see that, and we love that. But getting to India has been difficult because we spend a lot of time in North America and Europe. So, we have to do these big trips a number of times a year, but this was finally the time that we could make it work.”

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Finally, the time. Fifteen years of fans finding Bloom on a playlist late at night. Fifteen years of twelvefour at 3am. Fifteen years of Arms on repeat and Featherstone on a rainy afternoon. And then three nights in India where all of that private, personal, solitary listening became a shared thing. A room full of people who had each found this music alone, finally in the same place, at the same time, hearing it live.
Their most recent album, If You Go There, I Hope You Find It, released in January 2026, is their seventh. Debuted at number 13 on the ARIA Charts. Built in the same spirit as everything they have made before, quiet, careful, honest, music that trusts the listener to bring their own meaning to it. Because that has always been the Paper Kites way. They write the song. You bring the feeling. And somehow, every time, it fits.

Myfandom was there for the India chapter of that story, bringing the official Paper Kites India merch to life for fans who wanted to carry a piece of those nights home with them. Always Official. Only on MYFANDOM.

India waited fifteen years for The Paper Kites. It was worth every single one of them.