“The late ’90s were a really bad time for people trying to be rock stars, you know what I mean? It seemed like everyone was a one-hit wonder on the radio. We had friends who had a hit single on the radio and sold 500,000 records, and then they couldn’t get arrested a year later. I had this feeling at the time that that was not possible anymore, so the idea of becoming the biggest band in the country — it seemed laughable. That any band could become U2, or go from putting out their own record to playing an arena in a couple of years just seemed ludicrous. I felt that having those sort of ambitions was foolish, because there was no way that was going to be possible. If you saw it that way, you were just deluding yourself. I think we just always had this meager ambition.”
– Ben Giddard of Death Cab for Cutie tells the A.V. Club he never thought his band would leave the Northwest club circuit.