A loose, revolving-door band that put Toronto indie rock on the map

Broken Social Scene

Formed in Toronto in 1999 with a rotating cast of up to twenty members, Broken Social Scene became the centre of a wider community of Toronto indie bands in the early 2000s.

Toronto skyline, 2012 — Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

Broken Social Scene formed in Toronto in 1999 around musicians Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, built from the start as a loose collective rather than a fixed band, with a rotating roster that at various points included members of Metric, Feist, Stars and other Toronto acts. That structure made the band as much a hub for the city's indie music scene as a group in its own right, with members regularly stepping out to release solo or side-project work under their own names.

A defining Toronto sound

The band's 2002 album You Forgot It in People became a landmark record for Canadian indie rock, drawing international critical attention to Toronto's music scene at a moment when the city was not typically associated with cutting-edge indie music. The album's success helped establish Toronto, alongside Montreal, as a serious node in North American indie rock through the 2000s, and Broken Social Scene's collective model influenced how a generation of Toronto musicians thought about collaboration across bands.

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