Now known for their unique blend of potentially mainstream comedy and surrealist humor, Stella has garnered a small but dedicated fanbase.
Other members of Sterile Yak include Thomas Lennon, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Robert Ben Garant, and Joe Lo Truglio (Reno 911!).
Those members, along with Showalter, Black, and Wain, broke away to form their own comedy troupe, The New Group, which would go on to become the MTV series, The State.
The members of Stella started doing comedy shows at a jazz club called Fez in downtown New York City.
(www.davidwain.com), (The History of Stella) From 1998 to 2004 the troupe produced, wrote, and starred in 27 short films, originally intended for screenings at the group's live stage shows.
They quickly became popular after being hosted on the internet through CollegeHumor and have since been distributed freely online by fans on video sharing websites such as YouTube and Dailymotion.
Some of the actors to guest star in the shorts include Sam Rockwell, Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Julie Bowen, Zach Galifianakis, and Bradley Cooper, as well as several members of Stella's alma mater The State, such as Joe Lo Truglio.
On December 15, 2008, Stella premiered "Birthday", their first new short since 2004, on My Damn Channel, the website on which cast member David Wain had achieved much success with his show Wainy Days.
The resulting episodes were a blend of jokes and vignettes from the Stella shorts combined with plenty of new material, with each episode having an actual plot or story arc holding it all together, a change of pace from the short films which would frequently derail themselves entirely from any semblance of a storyline and make little effort to resolve or arc.