In 1993, Hayes answered an advertisement in a magazine placed by Daniel Jones for a lead vocalist position in the band called Red Edge. Hayes was successful despite his voice breaking in the audition, as he had mentioned in an interview with Rosie O’Donnell. The cover band broke up in 1994 and Hayes formed a partnership with Jones, a duo band initially to be called Crush. However, there already existed another band in the UK that owned the rights to the name. Hayes and Jones submitted their first demo tape to record companies under the name Bliss, before they eventually changed their name to Savage Garden, a phrase used by Anne Rice to describe the world through the eyes of Lestat in her novel The Vampire Lestat. The Savage Garden is a vision of Earth in which the natural laws of the world govern over anything aesthetic or civil.
Savage Garden started recording their debut album in 1995 with producer Charles Fisher. Their first single “I Want You” released in 1996 was the best selling single by an Australian artist that year. The second single “To the Moon and Back” topped the Australian charts at the end of 1996. He wrote the song in tribute to his brief yet intense relationship with Lucy Hodson citing their frequent and involved discussions on love, philosophy and space travel as his main inspiration. The third single “Truly Madly Deeply” was their second number one and was the best-selling Australian single of 1997. Their debut album, Savage Garden, was the best-selling album in Australia during 1997 and the duo won ten ARIA awards.