The Yours and Owls founders. Picture: supplied.

Four years on from opening a quaint coffee shop in a hole-in-the-wall space in the CBD, the collective known as Yours & Owls has become arguably the most influential, important cultural force in Wollongong.

Originally conceived as a coffee shop, then a gallery and restaurant space, then a hugely popular music venue, the Yours & Owls moniker recently shifted from a physical space at 77 Kembla Street to the name for a series of projects including pop-up gigs, music festivals and a record label.

"It definitely feels like it has been four years," laughed Yours & Owls director Ben Tillman, one-third of the original collective with Balunn Jones and Adam Smith.

"At the time it was hard, but looking back on it now, it actually worked."

Balunn Jones and Ben Tillman at the original Yours & Owls cafe which has grown into a music force in the city. Picture: SYLVIA LIBER

Having begun life as a coffee shop - "we just wanted good coffee in Wollongong," shrugged Tillman - then transforming into a restaurant, the venue soon embraced what it would become nationally renowned for - its tiny, sweaty, wooden-floored, stageless band space.

Hosting local, national and international bands up to seven nights a week, the venue became the epicentre of a swelling Wollongong music scene reeling from the closure of the Oxford Tavern and other music venues.

"It was literally, just let's do something, and create a place we would want to go if we were going out," Tillman said.

"I love this town and it has everything except for one element, which we're trying to give.''

With his experience booking bands at venues including the Grand Hotel and Waves nightclub, Tillman eventually brought music into the fold. Since then, the name Yours & Owls on a gig poster has become shorthand for a night worth attending, a ticket worth buying.

"I love this town and it has everything except for one element, which we're trying to give it. We've got the beach, the bush, all this beautiful area, but it's lacking that cultural core," he said.

The venue has been credited with kick-starting Wollongong's small bar invasion. Putting Wollongong back on the map as a playing destination for touring bands, "Owls" started attracting bands back to the area and hosted hundreds of concerts up until June 2013, when the bar was sold and renamed Rad. After well-noted legal troubles with a mural on the bar's exterior and a car crash which left Tillman with horrific spinal injuries, the upkeep of a bar became too much.

Instead, the team started hosting regular satellite gigs at venues around the Illawarra, as well as staging a festival with Music Farmers at the University of Wollongong headlined by The Drones. Since then, they have collaborated with Music Farmers on a series of "Farmer And The Owl" mini-festivals, started a record label - "F/O" - and begun promoting gigs at venues including Anita's Theatre, Splashes, Wombarra Bowling Club, the university and Rad.

The fourth year of Owls will be celebrated with an outdoor festival headlined by Dune Rats and Sticky Fingers, with 10 local and national bands, on October 4 in Stuart Park. Such is the interest in the event that all 2000 tickets have already sold out.

"It's about bringing everyone together, showing we can do cool stuff here - and there are lots of good people who want to do that," Tillman said.