In this contribution, we experimentally report recurrent switching between ground and excited state emission in a quantum dot laser controlled by optical feedback. We demonstrate that changing the phase of the optical feedback can efficiently induce switching between the two emission processes of the laser. Experimentally, by using an external mirror placed on a piezo-actuator, we were able to achieve incomplete switching between ground and excited state emission, i.e. without complete extinction of the modes. The switching takes place for variations of the external cavity length at the wavelength scale, i.e. around 1.2 um. Theoretically, we successfully link this switching behaviour with the evolution of the modal gain difference between the two modes induced by the variations of the optical feedback phase.