tour next week.

flyer by kai.

we embark with our friends on a navigation of virtue next week. we're very excited.

navigation of virtue (all dates w/ body nest):

• august 27th @ le knock-out! (québec city) w/ mourir demain (doors @ 6:30 p.m./music @ 7  p.m./all ages/$20)
• august 28th @ the bog hut (43 union street, sackville, nb) w/ ranger thin, & dc blob (doors @ 6 p.m./music @ 7 p.m./all ages/$10/p.w.y.c.)
• august 29th @ benevolent irish society (charlottetown) w/ dazey, 027, & krat0m (doors @ 2:30 p.m./$15/p.w.y.c.)
• august 30th @ gus' pub (halifax) w/ in the breaks, fishmonger & teleri (doors @ 8 p.m./music @ 9 p.m./$20)
• september 2nd @ finefinefine café (tiohtià:ke) w/ nelligan ($20/p.w.y.c./n.o.t.a.f.l.o.f.)
• september 3rd @ le spot (hull, ask a punk) w/ moridori & swallowtails (doors @ 6:30 p.m./music @ 7:30 p.m./all ages/$15/p.w.y.c.)
• september 4th @ the dock ellis (tkaronto) w/ lost unit & overcoat (doors @ 7 p.m./music @ 8 p.m./19+/$15/p.w.y.c.)—buy tickets here 

if you or a friend would be able to house us 4 in sackville, charlottetown, or halifax, please let us know—we're gracious house guests and would be eternally grateful.

flyer by willa coward.

flyer by do it together.

flyer by willa coward.

flyer by kai.

some other updates:

fest ruled. thanks to iy!im!atd! for enabling toast's guitar hero dreams, eudaemon for goading us into playing an after-show, april (and housemates) for letting us use your basement (we owe you a microphone), epyon for an unforgettable set, ubw for being such outstanding peers in our wonderful scene, the caution children for the affirmation of life & extremely kind words, mal for dutifully working the merch table, lauren for helping keep us organizers sane, and everyone who came for making it our favourite set in ages. we love this city so, so much.

"raptured", taken from this year's fest comp, is up now on bandcamp (where you can also buy physical copies of the entire tape) & subvert. we also have a few secret posters leftover, so those are for sale on bandcamp as well, in addition to a couple of other miscellaneous merch items.

poster by kai.

life has somehow been even busier than we originally ancitipated, so that live tape we mentioned in our last post is coming out in october instead; be on the lookout for that.

that's all for now. see you soon.

love,
boxxy

fest weekend + new merch + maritimes tour.

screamo pride month begins in 5 days.

small things coming soon in boxxy world. some news:

• new friends fest is less than a week away and we're pretty excited. you can see us play next sunday (august 2nd) with, in order: underwater basket weaving, coup d'état, gros enfant mort, poetry of torch, joliette, quiet fear, ostraca, commitment, tomb mold, clay birds & portraits of past. we're on 3rd after coup d'état.
• we've got some new shirts that we'll have ready in time for it and you can see the designs for all of them below.
• we have a new song on this year's fest comp, entitled Doomed From the Start; it's called "raptured" and we'll put it up online some time after fest is over.
• before august is over, we'll also have a new tape documenting some songs we recorded for the lovely people at met radio (cjtm 1280 am) this past january. we played 4 new songs (including "raptured") and an oldie, so if you'd like a sneak peek at what we're sounding like these days, look out for a post on that sooner or later. our sincere thanks goes out to delphine winton for putting up with our antics that day, letting us try too many takes of one song in particular, and for doing a great job capturing a packed set-up.
• aaaaand finally: we're touring up to the maritimes and back with our dear friends in body nest at the end of august. this'll be the farthest we've ever been from home as a band, so we're more than a little nervous to be actually gone for more than a couple of days, but we're very stoked, and we hope we can represent our city as best as we can. we'll have more details and a poster with all the dates up as soon as we can (probably after fest)—you can get a rough idea of the route via the "upcoming shows" widget (visible to your right on desktop, and viewable on mobile if you select the "view web version" option below this post and zoom in a bit).

design by kyle rotta.

design by kai.

design by kai with respect to mark chen.

i think that's everything for now. talk to you soon.

love,

boxxy 

summer shows + RIP treehouse.

it's been a quiet year for us so far. we've been busy dealing with boring things like school, work, poverty, and other things like that. life is long and short and difficult. in spite of it all, we have some shows coming up.

2023, outside the casbah.

of particular note: our best friends in treehouse of horror are calling it quits early next month. we'll miss this band very, very much, and we can't overstate how important they've been to our lives these past few years. they're ripping one last time with many of our dearest friends and some very cool surprise guests. jazz is out of town so we're moving as a 3-piece once again for this (as well as our gig at saint stephen's later this month) and planning to play mostly old stuff. we'd love to see you there.

as well, we'd like to thank everybody that attended stand & stare back in march; it was an beautiful night, and kai is aiming to put it together again next year. thank you especially to life & heaven through violence for making the trek up from the states, computer science & eric spinelli for driving all the way from montréal, alex & sonia for doing an amazing job on sound, and saint stephen's for having us. the more screamo we have in this cruel, cruel city, the better.

upcoming shows:

• june 27th @ church of saint stephen-in-the-fields (tkaronto) w/ real friend (AB), farron keep, no purpose & kahraba (doors @ 7:30 p.m./music @ 8 p.m./all ages/$20/p.w.y.c.)—buy tickets here
• july 3rd @ tranzac (tkaronto) w/ secret band, treehouse of horror (LAST SHOW), underwater basket weaving & body nest (doors @ 7 p.m./music @ 7:30 p.m./all ages/$25/p.w.y.c.)—buy tickets here
• august 2nd @ lithuanian house (tkaronto) for new friends fest, night 3/3 w/ portraits of past, tomb mold, joliette, clay birds, commitment, quiet fear, poetry of torch, gros enfant mort, underwater basket weaving & coup d'état (5 p.m./all ages)—buy tickets here
• september 17th @ bovine sex club (tkaronto) w/ the hirs collective & dear evangeline (19+/$20 adv./n.o.t.a.f.l.o.f.)—buy tickets here

flyer by kai.

flyer by ryan & kai.

flyer by asep yasin abdulah & kai.

flyer by hirs.

that's all for now—talk to you soon.

love,
boxxy

new friends fest '26.

flyer by asep yasin abdulah & kai.

it is happening again.

new friends fest '26 takes place at the lithuanian house in tkaronto, july 31–august 2. we will be playing alongside some of the best bands our scene has to offer and we hope to see you there. tickets are available now through the new friends diy website & for a discounted price through the venerable record shop emissions at dundas & ossington.

see you there.

love,

boxxy

stand & stare.

kai & kenley are booking a mini-fest at saint stephen's next month. we're playing the side room with computer science (montréal, first toronto show), insomniak, eric spinelli (montréal) & siamese connection. as for the main room: the almighty life are back after a crazy set at NFF last year, along with ultra love's first toronto appearance, boston's heaven through violence (members of ...and its name was epyon), searing, and our good friends in and always. none of the sets in either room will overlap with each other, so you can see every single band for $50 if you so desire. it's $25 for our room & $35 for the main room otherwise. you can buy advance tickets here.

photo by waka.

our hard luck show was very fun—thanks to everyone who came and to febuary & airgun for being swell. we still have some posters leftover from that gig for sale here for anybody interested.

flyer by kai.

our show with our wits at the rat's nest is in a little over a week. it's a very small space, so grab a ticket here if you're trying to be there. we might be playing a new song from that LP we keep talking about writing & recording...

flyer by the arcade.

if that date doesn't work for you for whatever reason, we've also got a gig coming up at the arcade the weekend after. it's a fundraiser for jazz to help her clear some debts: it'd be great to see you there.

that's all for now. hope the winter blues isn't getting you too down.

love,

boxxy

winter shows.

photo by jack yanover.

not much to say right now. we miss nick. listen to sundowner.

upcoming shows:

• january 27th (tomorrow) @ hard luck (tkaronto) w/ febuary & airgun (doors @ 7 p.m./all ages/$25)—buy tickets here (nearly sold out)
• february 20th @ the rat's nest (tkaronto) w/ our wits (8 p.m./19+/$10/p.w.y.c.)—buy tickets here
• march 21st @ church of saint stephen-in-the-fields (tkaronto) w/ ??? (5 p.m./all ages)

flyer by kai, printed by kid icarus.

flyer by kai.

hold your loved ones close.

weekender merch + go birds.

doom loop world tour poster.

new patch.

new shirt.

you've been out since the day you were born.

fenech will be replacing songs for listening in kitchener this sunday. jays in 6.

love,

boxxy 

halloweekend 2 + ZBR distro.

hi! we've got a weekender to montréal with our dear friends in and always & tachyon coming up. these are gonna be our last shows of the year while we gear up to hibernate & write more.

flyer by kai.

flyer by kim.

flyer by willa coward.

• october 31st @ kolors (tkaronto) w/ underwater basket weaving & and always (8 p.m./19+/$15/p.w.y.c.)—buy tickets here
• november 1st @ barfly (tiohtià:ke) w/ and always & tachyon ($15/p.w.y.c.)
• november 2nd @ last shop on king (kitchener) w/ tachyon, and always & songs for listening (7 p.m./all ages/$20/p.w.y.c.) 

it would be lovely to see y'all there. <3

for any american friends that might end up reading this for some reason: the daves of zegema beach records have kindly put some copies of last year's 7" up for distro via their u.s. store. you can grab those here if you so desire.

photo by zbr.

finally—we camped out in hamilton for the weekend... more on that later.

talk to you soon,

boxxy 

three long years

it's been a roller coaster of emotions the last three years. three years ago today, we put out our first EP, played our first show in nate's basement (thank you study room!), did our first south ontario run. we've made memories that i would never, ever take for granted, and fought through three eviction notices and some of the harshest winters and worst times of our lives together.

look at how young we were. crazy (photo by mg ommert)

i've never been in a band that people genuinely gave a shit about. more often than not, i've always been an outsider, never a participant. i've been going to shows since i was a kid, at masonic lodge, the green house, lee's, wherever there was a basement and a couple punks. but i never felt like i could make music that people would care about, and i'm so happy to be proven wrong, again and again.

us on route to kitchener. we were so late

i don't think any of us expected to still be doing this three years later. sure, we would've all still played in bands, saw each other at shows, mossed around afterwards, go to the same parties and lived in the same city. but i think as soon as we put out it's more like embracing, a scrappy demo EP that we recorded in the basement of houndstooth, we all realized there was something special.

the chemistry between faith, kai and i was so instantaneous. serendipitously meeting at a north york house party, kai and i just started talking about the good ol' days of the 905. faith and i knew each other from fortnite and locking ourselves in our rooms when COVID first hit. we had a handful of songs that we knew would make a pretty cool demo that we, i think, expected to be immediately forgotten. 

anniversary silkscreen print by kai.

as an artist, you can never, ever, take for granted that you have any audience whatsoever. in the fucking blender of ai slop and social media algorithms ramming your brain at full force with a new midwest emo pop punk song of the summer, we had to fight back against any urge to take a part of that circus to try to steal people's attention for one iota of a second. but people started paying attention to the scrappy band that tried to play as many shows as possible in a year, travelling off of my severance pay and more often than not showing up egregiously late, kai holding a stack of flyers and all of us apologetic about the way that we are as people.

the scene started swelling at the same time we were picking up steam. people were itching for the next few new friends shows, lots more screamo bands were starting in the city. turnout to bar orwell started to hit capacity on the regular. toronto's not the centre of the universe, but it sure feels like it when you're in the middle of a crowd, your friends all around you pulling the mic and yelling all the same words. i wouldn't give up the 416 for the world.

 

when the punks are in the late twenties / early thirties (photo by matty gagui)

so here we are, three years later, older, down two cars that we broke and several thousand dollars, living the dream. we put out a couple more things, our good buddy jazz joined and we're still hanging on by a thread. and i wouldn't have it any other way.

as always. 

death to capitalism

death to imperialism

death to all who oppose us

love,

toast

9/11 show.

thanks to emma goldman for a great show & to iris for filling in on bass. <3

next up: we're celebrating the wedding of laura & erin at saint stephen's in a few weeks. all proceeds will go towards trans mutual aid funds. see you there.

love,

boxxy

remaining summer shows.

flyer by no funeral.

next show: boxxy returns to the study room this tuesday for the first time since 2022 with emma goldman (vancouver), searing & sostre! (buffalo). this one's gonna be ridiculous: be there if you can.

alternate flyer by kai.

as well, we've got some photos our dear friend matty (of iwan, bloom dream & epyon fame) took at the nff pre-show last month:

edit: it's also toast's birthday today. <3 <3 <3

photo by laura quinn.

next tkaronto show: september 11th at saint stephen's, flyer soon.