 Initially they were formed as the Bottomless Schooners of Old in late 1988 in Perth as a side project and loose collective to perform cover versions of "countrified alternative rock" music.Early in the next year they adopted their name from the Triffids track, "Blackeyed Susan", which is on that group's fifth studio album, "The Black Swan" (April 1989); the track was co-written by Kakulas and McComb.They played eight gigs and recorded four songs before their main bands' reactivations forced them to put the project on hold.