> The things don't seem mutually exclusive to me.
Sure but now you have two very different ways to format your strings and language users need to realize they should be using the one they're not used to for these specific tasks, even though there's pretty much nothing helping make them realize it.
That significantly increases the user's cognitive load, and the risks of misusing APIs unless your language is able to express (and safegard against) the danger of string interpolation in specific contexts.
The things don't seem mutually exclusive to me.