THE WORLD IS VEILED IN DARKNESS. THE WIND STOPS, THE SEA IS WILD, THE EARTH BEGINS TO ROT. THE PEOPLE WAIT, THEIR ONLY HOPE A PROPHECY... WHEN THE WORLD IS IN DARKNESS, FIVE WARRIORS WILL COME... FIVE FIRE ROCKERS APPEAR AMONG THE PEOPLE, EACH CARRYING AN ORB. TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO, THE ORBS SHINED WITH LIGHT. NOW, ONLY DARKNESS.... SOFTER IS FIRE ROCK, THE WORLD'S ONLY HOPE. THEY WILL JOURNEY ALL ACROSS THE LAND, THROUGH DARK CAVERNS, INTO THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA, AND EVEN AMONGST THE CLOUDS, LOOKING FOR SOME WAY TO SAVE THE WORLD FROM THE PLAGUE THAT IS SLOWLY CONSUMING IT...

Bio: featuring promotional phrases
Softer is was held together by the same determination and engergy that helped the band originally forge itself (as Lowfive) in the desolate wilderness of Maine. You could call us a generic indie-rock band with predictable influences and a tried and tested sound, but in the same vein, I could call you a liar!

Building from the ground up, and with no scene to support us aside from the one we established on our own, we continue evolving. like the phoenix, we've persisted through cycles of destruction and rebirth from the ashes, having reformed and resurrected in different incarnations, using each incineration as a catalyst for greater things. No conform, No complacency!

Lowfive emerged from the cocoon that is "a semester away at college", into which the punk trio No Conform (Gabe Lane, Charles Long, and Matthew Deprez) entered in the fall of 2000. Reuniting after the months apart, the members' individual musical tastes had evolved to the point where they started the band over again from scratch. With all three members transferring to the same college in rural New Brunswick, Canada, the band started writing material with a melodic, less spastic, rock sound, influenced early on by OG Weezer and Texas ska/rock combo The Impossibles.

Recording their first demo in the spring of 2001 (Demolicious), the band took to the road (as is the only option to get anywhere from northern Maine). Playing mostly across the border, the band built a small following in Atlantic Canada. The band continued to mature, and by the end of the summer, material for their debut album was starting to emerge. Fall 2001 was spent fine-tuning existing songs, and writing several new pieces as the band attended school and played some local shows/bandy-battles in the area.

Returning home for the winter months, the band, along with myself (their 'manager & soundtech' at the time), set up camp in Gabe's basement to lay down the majority of what would become The Paths That Lead You Home - a studio project evolving the band's sound from 3-piece power pop (with a lingering hint of ska) to a full-band rock album, complete with layered guitars, acoustic guitars, and piano. Several songs were essentially constructed in the project studio as a joint production between Gabe and myself.

Following a month's work, the band once again parted ways and returned to school. This put the band on another beneficial hiatus, as each member further honed their craft, and Gabe prepped new material for the upcoming summer. I holed up in Boston once again with the raw tracks and a vision of things to come. continue...

Smarter than we seem, we knew that the current incarnation of the band would not be able to do justice to The Paths That Lead You Home in a live environment. The solution came in the form of our former roadie and (at that time) waste of energy Sean Higgins, who coincidentally enough wasn't very good at being a roadie, having never touched our equipment before.

Mr. Higgins proved useful: as a guitarist himself, he was able to seclude himself in his private ski lodge for that spring semester with the album demos, a bearskin rug, and his daily mug of hot cocoa. When the band reconvened for the summer months, they found themselves with a big stack of manufactured CDs, a newfound group energy, and a quickly filling gig schedule. continue...

In his first of many failures, Sean Higgins announced to the band that he would be out of town for the debut show of the summer. This called for a solution -- at that time, intended to be temporary. Enter myself. With a bunch of years of childhood piano instruction and a bitchin' CT-7000 Casiotone board (also from my childhood), I was recruited to learn parts for all the songs on the setlist to fill the Higgins-shaped hole.

Upon Sean's return, the band experimented with a 5-piece arrangement with satisfactory results. It was decided to continue with the keyboards as a semi-permanent fixture for the summer schedule. I'm not sure at which point in the summer we realized it, but with new material being written to accommodate the keyboard, it became a "key" element (pun forcefully intended - in fact, remaining all that validates the existence of this sentence) and part of the new signature sound.

During this summer we produced the V2 demo, featuring the first 2 songs written as a 5-piece. This demonstration highlighted a stylistic evolution simultanously toward faster/harder (Lie Down with Dogs) and slower/softer (The Atlantic Ocean).

After a successful summer of promotion and gigging, Lowfive had established enough of a fanbase that we felt it necessary to continue full-time, simply as a preservation measure. After all, we all know that if a band stops playing, it dies -- sort of like a shark who can't stop swimming. However, with members once again relocating to different countries (Gabe & Sean to Orono ME, Sean & Chuck back to New Brunswick Canada, and myself back to Boston MA), we had reached figurative crossroads. continue...

With Gabe and Sean located in central Maine and myself in Boston, we had a comfortable perimeter around the summer stomping grounds (Southern ME & New England in general). In the interest of keeping the momentum going, we elected to seek replacement players for Matt and Chuck, as their distance proved impractical for band activities. Although a rough time for band solidarity, we eventually reformed with area bassist Jason Unterreiner and local strongman Ian McConnell, both whom answered our call for musicians.

Following a semester of downtime, the new formation reforged the Lowfive sound and honed their combined abilities, returning to semi-regular gigging schedule at the turn of the year, including a farewell show in our original hometown that featured sets by both the v1.2 and the v2.0 lineups of the band.

With a few new tracks in the repertoire (Calico & An Element of Subtlety), this iteration of the band quickly recorded material for an EP (retroactively dubbed Threnody), showcasing the newest material, better recordings of the V2 demo tracks (with a little flare from the new v2 line-up), as well as some re-worked material from the Paths era.

Ultimately, this recording was never finalized, as after six months of light duty, Sean Higgins announced he was leaving the band at the start of the summer. Never taking anything that guy says seriously, we waited until he actually left before we got to business looking for a guitar player. During this hiatus, Jason also parted ways with the band, shattering Lowfive's 3-week-old record for "total number of former members". continue...

Luckily, our search for a guitarist to replace Sean rustled up several local musicians. We were glad we had such a dedicated and enthusiastic response, because it enabled us to slap a bass on one of those hotshots and call him a bass player to fill the open bass spot. but here's the kicker... he could play! Not to imply that the guitarist couldn't, because -- item -- he could play too!

Enter bassist Adam Smith and guitarist Jon York, two fine additions to the Lowfive team, giving us enough power to execute one of our most special moves yet... and just in time too! On August 15th 2003, we played our first show as SOFTER.

The name change, along with the introduction of new musicianship, marked another punctuation in the band's evolution. Most of the upbeat/poppy stuff from the earlier iterations of the band was replaced with more somber fare, experimenting with dynamics, diverse rhythms, and more angular instrumental/vocals. Lyrically, the material became a bit more sophisticated and philosophical.

New material in this era included '1913', 'Confessions of an Ardent Heart', 'Of Tourniquest & Treachery', and the material that was later recorded for the Wooden Walls demo and The Hunger Artist EP. The Threnody-era material became the legacy catalog, and most of the recurring Paths material was largely jettisoned, with the exception of resurrected full-band instrumentals of deep cuts 'Still Photography' and 'It Always Snows...' which to this point had never really been more than studio artifacts from the Paths sessions. continue...

2004 was a tumultuous time for the band, as most of the members (Gabe/Adam/Caleb) were graduating college and entering a new phase of life. From tumult, however, sprung a wealth of new material. Caleb's swan song with the band was a thesis project in spring 2004 composed of this very website, the 1913 music video, and the incomplete production of The Hunger Artist EP. Simultaneously, the first physical copies of new music since V2 demo were starting to be released with the CD-R Wooden Walls demo recorded by Jon up in Maine.

Shortly after graduation, Adam also moved on from the band, bringing Softer from a 5-piece down to a 3-piece. The band shored up the rhythm section by 'retro-cruiting' now-local founding member Chuck Long on bass. There was discussion of drafting Kirsten to replace keys, but this plan never came to fruition -- probably the best decision at this point, as almost all of the material after v2.0 was composed without keys and they were sort of added as an afterthought solely because we had a keys player (although at this point keys were inconsistent, as i was missing a lot of shows near the end of my tenure, with the rigors of finishing up college and the geographic distance proving problematic).

With the final 4-piece lineup in place, a few sessions of new songs were written and recorded in the next year or so, including the Immaterialist EP in 2005, and one last batch of new tunes the following year (not sure of the EP name, as i was mostly incommunicado during this period). With a stripped down instrumentation and a more vocals & guitar-focused style, the music was a little slower and softer still, but still retaining some of the spastic/discordant moments.

This era of the band saw inclusion of "Confessions" (polished up from the v2.1 Wooden Walls sessions) on Deep Elm's This is Indie Rock Vol. 3 compilation, as well as the 2 most mature recordings the band had made to date, in the two post-'Wooden Walls' sessions. A new partnership with Portland's NE Booking saw the band venturing out to new venues and expanding the touring footprint. Despite these progressions, all good things eventually come to an end, and the band ultimately fell to ashes for the final time in 2006. bio home.