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It was two decades ago when Tyler Bancroft and his friend Ben Worcester, both fresh out of high school at Eric Hamber, started writing songs and recording them around the Douglas Park neighbourhood they grew up in.

Even then, Bancroft was confident in what they were doing.

“The moment that Ben and I started making records, I had such a delusional belief in the band,” the singer-guitarist ​recalls on the phone to the Straight. “That’s really the only way you can be at all successful in a band—if you’re a little bit delusional and your belief goes beyond all realistic ties to the real world.”

Keyboardist Jaycelyn Brown and drummer Spencer Schoening joined early, and the band picked up bassist Nathan Shaw a couple of years later. The delusion paid off.

Said the Whale’s first LP, 2008’s Howe Sounds/Taking Abalonia, a collection of dreamy, shoegazey, laconic pop tunes—many of which were about Vancouver and B.C.—announced its presence on the local scene.

A year later, a second album, Islands Disappear, left no doubt about the band’s popularity, at least in Canada. That record included breakout single “Camillo (The Magician)” and had its moment (and then some) on the country’s alternative rock radio stations.

Confidence aside, Bancroft knows that the conditions were just right for Said The Whale to make an impact.

“That CBC Radio come-up of the early 2010s, that indie rock revolution,” he says. “There’s this class of bands—we almost didn’t deserve it—but everyone was gung-ho on indie rock bands. We worked really hard, toured all the empty rooms, and did all the things you’re supposed to do, and it did actually result in us having this small but loyal fanbase across Canada.”

Those bands included acts like Yukon Blonde, Hey Ocean!, and Mother Mother in B.C., and Canadian compatriots like Tokyo Police Club, Born Ruffians, and Hollerado.

“All of those bands benefited from the strength of that Canadian indie rock thing that happened,” Bancroft says.

Some of those groups, like Tokyo Police Club, have called it quits. Some have simply kept the lights on while also moving on with their lives in other ways, and still others have found wide success after that original boom.

Mother Mother, for instance, unlocked the TikTok algorithm to the point that it was able to support international tours and boost the band’s streaming income and popularity.

Montreal’s Wolf Parade was having issues filling the WISE Hall a few years ago. Now, thanks to a 20-year-old song getting a key placement on the popular TV show Heated Rivalry, the group is playing three sold-out shows at the Pearl this coming fall.

For Said The Whale, despite millions of streams on songs like “Camillo (The Magician)” and “I Love You”, there hasn’t been that big lucky break.

“We never really had the ‘Whoops we got famous’ thing,” says Bancroft. “And the reason it happened for Mother Mother was that it was happening organically on TikTok, and then they went in and did the work. We did the social media stuff for a bit but stopped. I suppose maybe if I was really committed to posting every day and stuff like that, it could or would have happened.”

Instead, life happened.

Bancroft admits that the band became “less of an everyday thing”. Schoening and Shaw left Said the Whale in the mid-2010s, though Schoening still pitches in to drum whenever needed. Lincoln Hotchen eventually joined on bass. Worcester and Brown both have children and juggle full-time jobs.

Bancroft has managed to merge business with passion with a job as director of music at Aritzia, where, contrary to what people think after hearing his title, he doesn’t simply curate the playlists in the company’s many stores. He oversees that part of it, but there’s a lot more going on, too.

“Basically I work with creative teams at Aritzia to find the right voice and point of view for music at Aritzia,” he says. “Literally anything music-related, from musicians in the stores to licensing music for campaigns, is what I’m doing.”

Bancroft is also passionate about encouraging other musicians to leverage their time spent with bands into meaningful careers, if that’s what they want.

“I’ve had a lot of these conversations with friends of mine who are trying to exist outside of music in some sense and are trying to figure out what their skillset is,” he says. “I maintain that being a band for a long time and doing it in the DIY spirit like we and so many of our peers did—that’s a superpower. You’re wearing a bajillion hats—you’re the load-in person, the transport person, the merch person, the performer, the social media manager, the designer—and you’re speaking a million languages to mixing engineers, publicists, and booking agents. It’s unique.”

While Said the Whale’s productivity slowed in the wake of COVID—it has released one album since, 2021’s Dandelion, along with a couple of b-sides—Bancroft is happy with where the band is at. A 20th anniversary tour this year has almost fully sold out its six shows in Victoria, Vancouver, Lake Country, Calgary, Edmonton, and Toronto. It’s the first time the band has actually been on tour in about four years.

“I realize that this is a geriatric tour at best,” Bancroft says with a laugh. “But still, it’s a string of shows. There’s something really nice about doing a few in a row and feeling like you’re really getting back into it and you feel tight by the end of it. It’s a rhythm you get into.”

Asked what song he’s looking forward to playing during the tour, Bancroft doesn’t hesitate.

“There’s a song called ‘Level Best’ [off the 2019 album Cascadia],” he says. “I wrote it for my first son and then co-opted it for my second son—that’s the nature of the second kid, you get the hand-me-downs. It’s just special to me. Our band has grown up with our fans a little bit—a lot of fans and listeners and supporters have become parents and have kids around the same age as us. I can often see people in the crowd relating to the song.”

That song features Bancroft singing directly to his kid(s) and has the lyric, “If you start a band, well, you can use my van”. One assumes it’s not the same ’89 Chevrolet van that Bancroft and company took on the road for their first-ever tour, the one that Bancroft has tattooed on his arm. But maybe he’s that delusional. 

Said The Whale plays the Hollywood Theatre on April 11 as part of its 20th Anniversary Tour. Tickets here.