The Pillows - History - Late 2000's and 20th Anniversary (2005-2009)

Late 2000's and 20th Anniversary (2005-2009)

On January,2005 the pillows released the live DVD "916" which features footage of their 15th anniversary concert of 2004.

In March 2005, the pillows played their first show in the United States at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, followed by concerts in New York City and San Francisco. On September, the band released a live DVD titled "Delicious Bump Tour in USA" featuring footage of their first tour in America with fellow band Noodles and also a new single, "Non Fiction". On November they released the second single of the year,"The Third Eye". Both singles were used on their upcoming 2006 album, My Foot, which was quite well received by fans (after the criticism about the band's lasting quality since 2001 album Smile) and sold well.

On February, 2006 to help promoting the My Foot tour, one track of the album, "Gazelle City" was released as the album's third single. The album was released in the United States in July of 2006 by Geneon, with a growing international fan-base and growing domestic sales of their albums and singles over the past four years.

On June, the pillows returned to North America during their tour in support of the album My Foot, with several more dates in the U.S. and a show in Mexico City.

In 2007, the Pillows released their 25th single,"Scarecrow" which was used in the anime series Moonlight Mile, being included on their next album, Wake Up! Wake Up! Wake Up!. This album marks their first release on the Avex Trax label.

On August the band released one more single, "Ladybird Girl" which is being used as the theme song for the Japanese version of the children's animated series Ben 10.

On November, the band released a 5 discs single collection, Lostman Go to Yesterday, featuring all the band's singles released under the King Records label and 21 music videos on a DVD in the same collection. On the same day they also released their fifth live DVD, Lostman Go to America featuring footage of their 2006 American tour in support for the album My Foot.

In January, 2008 the band released a live DVD, Wake up! Stand up! and Go! featuring footage of their Wake Up! Tour of 2007 an a single, "Tokyo Bambi". On May a new single came out, "New Animal" and along with their previous two singles, it is featured on their fifteenth studio album, Pied Piper.

The band returned to the US starting with Los Angeles, followed by another appearance at SXSW, San Francisco, Seattle, New York City, and Anime Boston. in which the band played for a crowd of more than 5,000 people.

Still in 2008, legendary English rock band Oasis extended an offer for The Pillows to play as the opening act at their concert in Japan, but frontman Sawao Yamanaka refused their offer. In a January interview for Japanzine, Yamanaka joked that he "turned down the offer in order to have a fun story to tell".

In 2009, in order do celebrate their upcoming 20th anniversary, the Pillows issued a series of releases called "Late Bloomer Series". It includes two DVDs: Pied Piper Go to Yesterday and Blue Song With Blue Poppies, two best-of compilation albums, Rock Stock & Too Smoking the pillows and Once upon a time in the pillows, a single "Ameagari ni mita Maboroshi" (featured on their 16th studio album OoParts (Out of Place Artifacts)) and later the DVD of their anniversary concert, Lostman Go to Budokan, released in the following year.

On September 16, the Pillows gave their first concert in the legendary Nippon Budokan arena commemorating their 20th anniversary. The footage of the concert was later released in 2010 as their ninth live DVD, Lostman Go to Budokan, which came out in both regular and limited edition. The limited edition included the concert, a documentary DVD and a special 60-page photo album of the band.