After a few singles and EPs they released their first album in 2018 with Thurston Moore and Eva Prinz's Daydream Library Series, and have since signed to Kill Rock Stars in the U.S.[3][4] Big Joanie was formed by Stephanie Phillips in 2013, who posted online asking for bandmates with whom to start a black feminist punk band after becoming frustrated with the lack of intersectionality in the scene.

Chardine Taylor-Stone, who Phillips had met through a Black Feminist meet-up group, and the band's original bassist Kiera Coward-Deyell both responded to the social media post.

The title track is inspired by a lecture by the writer Melissa Harris-Perry, who compared life as a black woman in a white patriarchy to trying to find a true vertical in a room where everything is crooked.

On 5 September 2018 Big Joanie announced their debut album Sistahs would be released in late November the same year with a music video for lead single "Fall Asleep".

[17] On 14 August of that year the band released a 7" single of their cover of Solange's Cranes in the Sky with a live recording of It's You from their first album on the flip.

[18] On 2 October it was announced that Big Joanie had signed in the U.S. to Portland OR based independent record label Kill Rock Stars ahead of their second album.