Sofa

Emerging Indie Pop Group

Sofa was a band from 1993 to 1997. Sofa formed when Brad Todd (voice) met Keith Marchand (drums) while teaching a summer course at Concordia University’s department of Fine Arts. The delicate teacher-student relationship was heedlessly abrogated by drinking sessions in which a shared love of Dischord, Factory and Mute recordings was disclosed and plans to make a band were hatched. Ian Ilavsky (guitar) was approached and ritualistically indoctrinated with repeated forced viewings of Wings Of Desire and Nostalghia. The band was born and began writing, with Scott Clarkson (bass) recruited from the graveyard shift of one of Montreal's more colourful 'short-stay' hotels a few months later. The four founding members stuck together for the duration, devoting themselves to the sonic transmission of isolation, neurosis and loss. Sofa played dozens of local and regional shows through the mid-90s and recorded constantly, issuing several cassette releases over the years before recording what would be their first and last official full-length CD Grey in 1996. Steady and sustained poverty kept them mostly locked down in Montreal for the duration of their five-year run, though they caught the enthusiastic ears of The Geraldine Fibbers in 1997, who invited them to open some shows in the American Northeast (marking the band's only foray outside Eastern Canada). The group disbanded amicably at the end of 1997 – just as things were looking up.