My band mostly plays for fun so we will do the tunes we enjoy. Some of us have written songs, but not worked them into the band set yet. They have to fit our general theme of swing jazz, but then we do stretch that a bit. I do have an ambition to write some rock songs for a band though.
!BEER
That's pretty cool, I love the swing kind of stuff, my uncle plays double bass in a band called the swing cats, they're really cool. Yeah that makes sense wanting to keep the genre one style, we've got one original and another we're playing around with. We might include it into the set when doing the covers, but it'll depend on the crowd.
With the other band I'm in Dangerous Dave and the Side Effects we only play originals which are mainly punk and ska kind of stuff, it's a lot of fun doing originals. But, doing some good covers is fun too, especially while playing for people. I've noticed the reaction to the covers can tend to get a better reaction from people, but when getting a compliment about an original song it feels like it means more or something.