I don't operate in the same sector as you, Blue. We create the songs that, if we're very lucky, cover bands will play in years to come. Why do we do it? God only knows. It certainly isn't for the money
We play whenever some venue thinks they're doing us a favour by getting us to play for 45-60 mins then paying the five of us £0-50 for the trouble. We just pool it all and when we've got enough we hit the recording studio/get CDs made up/get merch made up and do it all again. It is not a "boys night out", it's a penny scramble to scrape the money together to progress, to make our music and evolve it to a finalised state. Sure it's also about entertaining and making people dance - we love playing live and seeing people having a good time. But we've got our own thing to say and we do it when we can.