Every band has an origin story. Ours involves a closet, Kijiji, and a show that got booked before we were actually a band.

In the summer of 2018 I stepped back from the metal scene with the idea of starting a solo acoustic project. Being the productive person I am, I spent most of that time on Kijiji looking for musicians for something completely different. That's where I found Beau. One of us had posted an ad, the other responded, and without ever meeting in person we made a plan. He came over, walked into my vocal booth (a closet, genuinely just a closet), and tracked vocals for a song I'd sent him a few days earlier. We never did anything with that song. But something clicked. His voice was exactly what I didn't know I was looking for, and right then I knew the direction had to be pop-punk. A real band.

Now I needed a bassist. I'd played with one previously who had since moved down my back lane, so I called him up and asked him to come track bass on a few ideas. Somewhere between him showing up and us wrapping up, I casually mentioned we had a show booked and that he was playing it. He wrote the parts, so it would be easy enough, right?

Around the same time, a drummer randomly added me on Facebook. Also looking to put something together. I pitched the idea, he was in, and before we even had a name we had drum demos being tracked in a garage in Portage la Prairie.

That left us needing a name. I dug up an old notes app list I'd thrown together for the acoustic project that had quietly died a few months earlier. Most of the names on there were dark and heavy, very much still in the metal headspace. But one stood out: Sleepless. The problem was it's a common word and plenty of other bands had already claimed it in some form. Then the slash showed up. I honestly don't remember exactly where it came from, but the second it was Sleep/less it just felt right. Different enough to own. And that was that.

As for JC, our guitarist, he was never really asked to join the band. He was told he was playing a show. He showed up, played the show, and never left. Honestly pretty on brand for how this whole thing came together.

A closet vocal session, a back lane phone call, a garage in Portage, a dead notes app, and one well placed slash. That's how Sleep/less was born.

Want to hear where we went from there?

Come find us at a show.
Brad Conrad Wiebe, Sleep/less (Sleepless)