While Vancouver has lost many fond eateries, watering holes, and cultural events during the pandemic, the city is also losing a band that was the city itself.

We Are the City announced on social media and its website this morning (October 9) that it is disbanding after 12 years.

“While our personal relationships remain blissfully intact, our creative paths have diverged,” the band stated, adding that they remain “best friends forever”.

The band members—which consist of singer-keyboardist Cayne McKenzie, guitarist David Menzel, and drummer Andrew Huculiak—state that the band, which originally formed in Kelowna and drew its name from the Bible, reached its peak and “died of natural causes”.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CGIB2Y0B0Mz

The Vancouver-based band will release one final song on Sunday (October 11), “Lover is Dead”, and will also play one final show on October 23 entitled RIP We Are the City: A Live Streamed Celebration of Life. (Full details are available at the band's website.)

However, fellow local indie band The Zolas posed an unsupported yet laudable conspiracy theory that it is all but a ruse, with the final event featuring relative unknowns performing WATC songs for no apparent reason.

https://twitter.com/thezolas/status/1314613690394533889

We Are the City released its debut album, In a Quiet World, in 2009, produced by Tom Dobrzanski of the Zolas.

The band’s third album, Violent (released in 2013), was a companion to the same-named Canadian-Norwegian feature drama Violent, the directorial debut of Huculiak and which the band also recorded an original score for.

The film was met with critical praise and garnered accolades, including winning the Best B.C. Film and Best Canadian Feature Film awards at the 2014 Vancouver International Film Festival and being included in Canada’s Top Ten in 2014.

Huculiak premiered his second feature set amid the Okanagan wildfires, Ash, at the 2019 Vancouver International Film Festival.

The band released five albums and two EPs, with the latest album featuring the prescient title RIP released this year.