At the age of seventeen, Temperley met future band member Joel Quartermain during a musical performance by the latter at Temperley's high school. At the time, Temperley was already friends with Stuart MacLeod, as they were neighbours since the age of 6.[5] At the age of eighteen, Temperley returned to England in an attempt to re-kindle friendships with his former classmates at Ko Hsuan.[3] He subsequently returned to India, where he again stayed at Pune. While in India, Temperley decided to become more serious about his music. In a letter to MacLeod, he states When I get back, I really think we should turn this into something serious, because we've got some good stuff going on.[3] Upon his return to Fremantle, Temperley informed Quartermain of his decision; at the time, Quartermain was playing in funk metal band Freud's Pillow. While at university, Temperley, MacLeod and Quartermain formed Eskimo Joe for a Battle of the Bands competition. Initially, Temperley had written a number of folk-type and power pop songs, and he later revealed the band's thinking at the time: If we write four more of them we can win the campus band competition! So that's exactly what we did, and for a while thanks to radio play of a song called "Sweater", we wallowed in the world of power pop. Funnily enough, it wasn't until Girl, our debut album, that we returned to the sort of songs we had intended to do at the beginning, the sort of songs that had inspired that letter to Stu. Once we found that sound though, we never looked back.[3] Temperley sang a reinterpreted version of the song "To Look at You", with INXS, on the 2010 cover version album Original Sin.[6] In September 2016, Temperley released his debut solo four-track EP Hope Street.[7] In August 2018 Temperley announced his debut solo record All Your Devotion, self-described as "a collection of ruminating, thoughtful and affecting songs".[8] In October 2022, Temperley released his second studio album, Machines of Love and Grace.[9]