Claude MarQuis writes and records everything alone first — at home, on his own, song by song — building complete recordings before the band ever hears them. Love Question Mark was made that way. For Those Who Hate Human Interaction was made that way. Every PepTides album begins as a solo recording, and then nine people bring it to life.

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The PepTides EP (2016) was the band’s answer to that process.

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Six all-new studio recordings of live favourites, captured the way audiences had been hearing them for years. Recorded at Living Music Studios with engineer and mixer Eric Eggleson, it marked the first time the full PepTides sound was properly committed to tape.

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The lead single “Don’t Believe in Love” launched ahead of the EP with a music video edited by Claude MarQuis was premiered by Exclaim!. The song went on to air on commercial radio across Canada and charted on the Earshot National Top 50.

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The Ottawa Citizen previewed the EP release show twice — critic Lynn Saxberg in Arts Best Bets, and Kirstin Endemann in Hot Gigs, who called the band “infectiously fun, theatrical, retro soul-synth.”
The release show sold out.

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A second video, “202 Washington DC,” followed that October — also premiered by Exclaim!, and directed and edited by MarQuis and Chris Mullington.

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Refined Geekery called “Don’t Believe in Love” “the infectious track” that first got them hooked on the band, describing the EP release show as one of those rare nights that stays with you:

“The energy, enthusiasm and just sheer joy… I can’t remember the last time I had that much fun at a concert.”

Ottawa Life later featured the band on its cover, noting The PepTides were now “showered with acclaim that beams as brightly as some of their hairdos” — armed with a body of work that, as they put it, “transcends any one genre should you be able to hold it down long enough to define it.”

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​Among the EP's tracks, "Love Live Get High" has become the band's signature live anthem — a dance floor invocation built on MarQuis's darkest logic: we are born to die / love live get high. Invariably, the room obeys.

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“Attack of the Treadmill” — first written for Revenge of the Vinyl Café — reappears here, finding its way back into the band’s electric live shows.