past perfect

Hello teacher

Could you let me know why past perfect is used?

Every band has a shelf life; Happy refugees' has finally expired . We always felt excluded in many ways: never reaching much of an audience or selling many records. We always felt like we were waiting for our audience. We always played like it was our last performance

I dont understand the use of past perfect " had expired" because the band split because they did not have audience or because they did not sell many records
In this case it seems that past perfect happens after past simple :why ?

Is it because it would have been too heavy to change all or most of all past simple verbs into past perfect

please give me an answer!!!!!