The Laureates' sound came together over a two-year span beginning in late 2005 after Chad independently wrote and recorded a self-produced lo-fi "album" that was exciting enough to inspire him to go out and find people to perform the songs. He first found Crawfie (bass) and Pete (drums). Adam (guitar) joined in February of 2007. The resulting music recalls traces of teenage years spent listening to the underground rock of the '80s and '90s and classic rock and roll heard on the radio in dad's car. The songs seem to pretend that Pixies and The Replacements were contemporaries of The Beatles or The Who or if the British Invasion never stopped but only changed uniforms.