Sailboats was a screamo band from Berkeley,
California that probably
formed some time around and probably
dissolved some time around . Information on
the band is scarce; all that we know is that they were a power trio, at least
one member of the band went on to form Loma
Prieta, and they released a two-song demo some time
in . The band is occasionally referred to as
“Behind Trees”, which is also the title of the first song on their
demo; their MySpace page’s URL has a
slug of behindtrees, and reportedly, the members of Loma
Prieta refer to the band as “Behind
Trees” and will occasionally play the song of the same name live. There
was a rumor floating around the internet when the band dissolved that their
dissolution was due to two out of the three members dying in a car crash, but
most sources seem to discount this as a hoax started by the band themselves.
Some sources also claim that the band recorded an LP before breaking up, but
that the LP was never released. Their two-song demo is also sometimes extended
to a four-song demo (with two extra tracks at the end, “53 Second
Song” and “Four”), but these two tracks are disputed and
probably have been confused with the actual demo (possibly being songs by a
different band); still, they are included for completeness.
It’s unfortunate that the copies of the demo now floating around are in a
very low-quality encoding (128kb/s MP3), especially since the quality of the
recording itself seems to be quite good, and the songs and performances are
very strong. In the words of a RateYourMusic
user,
Sailboats are “the greatest screamo band that
never was”. The two-song demo comes highly recommended to any screamo fan.
notes on the distributions
The tracks “Two” and “Four” are sometimes listed as
“2” and ”4”, respectively. It may or may not be the
case that “53 Second Song” and “Four” are by
Sailboats.
![cover art for “[demo]”](demo.jpg)