The band was created in 2006 in Warsaw by two guitarists – Tomasz Dąbrowski and Piotr Blak. It was soon joined by the vocalist, Bela Komoszyńska; in the meantime many drummers and bass players joined up. Eventually, Maciej Gołyźniak and Bartek Mielczarek stayed.
In 2008 the song Winter appeared in the one of the compilations from the Minimax series, released by the famous Polish broadcaster Piotr Kaczkowski. The band represented Poland during the Global Battle of the Bands, a British live music competition, where bands from over 30 countries performed. In 2009 and 2010 Sorry Boys were working on their debut CD, which was released as Hard Working Classes in the Fall of 2010. Three years later Vulcano, their second, more mature album, premiered. It involved their first song in Polish.
The leader of the band asked about her earliest musical inspirations listed Ewa Demarczyk, one of the most original figures on the Polish music scene, as one of them. In terms of foreign artists, Komoszyńska appreciates PJ Harvey, Tori Amos and Björk – the most important musicians of 90s alternative music – and Kate Bush. When it comes to other fields of art, the vocalist, who studied ethnology and cultural anthropology, highly values Tadeusz Konwicki and Andrzej Żuławski, both of whom were filmmakers and writers.
According to Komoszyńska, Hard Working Classes talks about ‘emotionally demanding work one has to put into building a relationship’.
She explained the title of the second CD, Vulcano, the following way:
It’s a record about archetypes and the beauty of humankind dancing on a volcano. It’s about juggernaut and regeneration, sweet solitude in space, secluded cities and betrayed lovers.
In the two years between Hard Working Classes and Vulcano, the sound of the band has significantly changed. A lot of electronics have been introduced to Vulcano by a young producer Marek Dziedzic, known as the co-author of successful albums by Mela Koteluk and Ballady i Romanse. Sorry Boys considered him such an important co-creator of the record, that they invited him to cooperate on the next album.
Tuneful The Sun and Phoenix were chosen to promote the album. Vulcano features one song in Polish, Zimna wojna. Why only one? As Komoszyńska explained in an interview:
When we working on the CD, we had a few songs in Polish, but we decided that only Zimna Wojna isn’t going to diverge from the rest of the tracks, that it’s not going to be some sort of an excess.
The performances of the band show that the material prepared for their new album contains a lot of well-written lyrics in Polish.
The band has spent a significant part of 2015 in a studio, distilling ideas for new songs. In May Komoszyńska lifted the veil on the new record and announced that:
[...] the new album is certainly going to be melodic. The songs are very impressionistic, built on a strong, one-off surge. Of course there are also songs which take weeks to finish, but the melodics are completely different than in the case of Vulcano.
The musicians take part in other projects too. Blak is a duet in which Piotr Blak is responsible for composition and instruments, and Agata Jaworska is the vocalist. Their debut single, Take Me Home, was released in Spring of 2016. At the same time, a record by the supergroup Heart & Soul premiered – Komoszyńska sang two of the songs. Gołyźniak is hard-working, too: he's co-operated with Ania Dąbrowska, Paweł Kukiz, Ryszard Rynkowski and Andrzej Piaseczny, among others. He plays in the band of Monika Brodka and is engaged in an instrumental project, M2.
Sorry Boys performed on the most important Polish festivals: Open’er, Tauron Nowa Muzyka, Jarocin, Spring Break. The band acquired a new audience thanks to the performance during Maciej Zień’s fashion show in 2011. In the Fall of 2015, Sorry Boys played at Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg, and at May 2016 at The Great Escape festival in Brighton.
Discography:
- 2010 – Hard Working Classes
- 2013 – Vulcano
Author: Jacek Świąder, translation: Natalia Sajewicz, June 2016